Managing impressions, mediating conflict: The discursive construction of authority in televised Chinese aging-related family disputes

Abstract Using critical discourse analysis, this study examines how mediators in China’s aging family conflicts use impression management strategies to construct professional authority in the setting of televised mediation, and reveals the cultural-ideological underpinnings of this practice. The research finds that mediators manage their impressions as a safe third party and moral-technical authority through a composite strategy system of emotional foundation, authoritative intervention, and boundary maintenance. The core mechanism of their practice lies in acting as cultural-ethical translators, reframing modern rights-based claims on support and property into sentiment-reason issues aligned with indigenous ethics like filial piety and family harmony. The study indicates that while this culturally embedded impression management model can effectively facilitate reconciliation, it may also moralize individual responsibility for structural intergenerational contradictions, producing a depoliticization effect. Theoretically, this study expands impression management theory by situating it within the high-emotion, relationship-intensive, and semi-institutionalized context of televised family mediation, and through dialogue with mainstream value-neutral models, argues for the cultural embeddedness of mediation practice and its inherent normative tensions.