Media Mirroring, International Perception, and the Struggle for Historical Memory: How Media Coverage of the Nanjing Massacre Deeply Shaped International Relations

The media dissemination of the Nanjing Massacre constitutes a seminal case in the study of international relations. Third-party media, through images and text, broke through information blockades, laying the foundation for global recogni-tion of the atrocities; by contrast, perpetrator-state media employed narrative manipulation to delay historical reckoning and deepen cognitive rifts between nations. Drawing on original archives and empirical materials from the Memo-rial Hall of the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, this paper examines—through the three dimensions of fact construction, public opinion mobilization, and rule evolution—the “evidence chain–narrative framing–rule transformation” mech-anism. It reveals how the media reshape national images, consolidate interna-tional consensus, reconstruct postwar order, and act as structural variables in-fluencing Sino-Japanese relations and East Asian security cooperation. The study finds that the power of media in international relations hinges on balanc-ing evidentiary authenticity and narrative ethics: when images and texts form a rigid mutual corroboration, they can drive the evolution of international hu-manitarian norms; conversely, they exacerbate cognitive fragmentation. Estab-lishing a transnational mechanism for verifying historical authenticity is a crit-ical pathway for addressing the challenges of “memory politics” and safeguard-ing stability in international relations in the digital era.