A Digitalized Approach to Discourse Production and Reception from the Perspective of Proximization Theory

Previous research on Proximization Theory has mainly focused on the perspective of discourse production. This study attempts to compare the differences between discourse spaces of production and reception, specifically examining the differences in theme distribution in the two spaces, as well as discourse production and reception strategies from the perspective of Proximization Theory. Through thematic analysis and close reading, this study analyzes reports and comments on the incident of “Nuclear Wastewater Discharge from Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan” on the news aggregation website Reddit. The findings are as follows: 1) The themes in the discourse space of reception show significant expansion and exhibit an attitude of resistant reading; 2) The original report text, in order to deconstruct the legitimacy of Japan’s wastewater discharge, employs spatial, temporal, and axiological proximization strategies, with spatial proximization being predominant; 3) Readers in the discourse space of reception employ five discourse strategies.