Updated on 2025/04/24

写真a

 
GARCIA-NOBLEJAS FLORIANO, Belen
 
Affiliation
Faculty of International Research and Education, School of International Liberal Studies
Job title
Assistant Professor(non-tenure-track)
 

Internal Special Research Projects

  • Geopolitics and Public Opinion: Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of China’s state media on Okinawa (2012-2023)

    2024  

     View Summary

    My research project has advanced together with parallel research, giving some concrete outcomes. Although I haven’t spent most of the funding, the TOKUTEI KADAI grant has allowed me to start and reflect on a topic that I will continue to explore in the coming months, possibly years. I was unfamiliar with Okinawa’s situation and its geopolitical relevance, especially regarding China-Japan-Taiwan relations.A short visit to Naha, the capital, helped me better understand the historical context and the relationship between the Ryukyu Kingdom and China, which has been emphasized in recent official discourse by Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. Through conversations with locals, museum visits, and library research, I built a foundational knowledge for conducting critical discourse analysis on China’s official statements on Okinawa/Ryukyu. I could also make a list of specific individuals in relevant peacebuilding institutions in Okinawa that I will interview in the following months to complete my research.During this time, I compiled a corpus of 843 articles from official Chinese media (China Daily, People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency, and Global Times) from 1996 to the present. I’ve entered this data into NVIVO software and started the analysis, finding trends and patterns that can be connected to China's most recent approach to Okinawa and the East China Sea.In early February, I met with representatives from East Asian Studies at the University of Salamanca and Universidad Autónoma in Madrid. They showed interest in my research, and this may lead to collaboration and academic exchanges in Spain in the short term. So far, I’ve developed a draft paper , including conceptual and theoretical frameworks that allows an integrative perspective of Okinawa, its geostrategic relevance and potential for China. I aim to submit this  paper to a high-impact journal in Spanish language. A second article will be particularly focused on the results and discussion from the Critical Discourse Analysis conducted on China's media, which I also aim to publish in an international high-impact journal in English language. I aim at sending both of these papers for publication before September 2025.This research has allowed me to reflect on the topic and build the essential knowledge for a couple of solid papers. My goal is to raise awareness and understanding of the situation in Spain, although I plan to publish the paper in English. I expect to present my findings through talks and communications in Spain and internationally. Particularly, I sent a proposal to share my research on the 8th Conference of the Asian Borderlands Research Network, titled "Negotiating Asian Borders: Actors, Displacements, Multiplicities, Sovereignties" which will be held in Taipei in January 2026.These are, as mentioned, indirect outcomes of the opportunity provided by the TOKUTEI KADAI grant. Despite my original goal to produce a paper by now - delay due to ongoing publication process of four other papers in high-impact journals, this project allowed me to build a strong foundation that will soon result in two papers and, hopefully, further research papers in the midterm related to Okinawa, cultural identity, and even its links with Latin America,