International Media Framing of China’s Domestic Politics: An Analysis of Aljazeera English and BBC News

MUHAMMAD ARIF¹ & NOOR HAYAT²
¹Hebei University, China
²University of Central Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract
This study is a comparative content analysis of news content of Aljazeera English (AJE) and BBC News on China’s national political affairs in their online news editions from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2014 after the assumption of power by Chinese president Xi Jinping. The study compares the patterns of news coverage by two international broadcasters in the context of Framing Theory as well as political and economic events of the times. The study followed the structural pattern of media content analysis – mass media structure their content as an interpretation of reality for audiences, and the media content is created by a variety of factors that result in different versions of reality, such as political and economic factors. Two frames were identified in the news coverage by both the channels. AJE used cooperation frame to present news related to China’s trade and investment deals, while confrontation frame was applied by BBC to show conflicts and disputes of China to global audience.

Keywords: China, communication, media framing, china politics, political news, China bashing, soft power, BBC, Aljazeera

References

AJE-Aljazeera English (AJE) www.alajazeera.com
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world/asia/china
El-Nawawy, M., & Iskandar, A. (2002, March). Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab NewsNetwork Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East. USA: WestviewPress.
Entman, R. 1993. Framing: Towards Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication. 43 (4):51-58.
Gitlin, T. (1980). The whole world is watching: Mass media in the making and unmaking the new left. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge: Harvard University press.
Huang, Y., and Leung, C.C.M. (2005). Western-led press coverage of mainland China and Vietnam during the SARS crisis: Reassessing the concept of ‘media representation of the other’, Asian Journal of Communication, Volume 15, Issue 3, 302- 318
Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The PoliticalEconomy of the Mass Media. New York Pantheon
Hoi Cheong Chan, (2013) Portrayal of China’s Rise in British Newspapers: A ‘Clash of the West with the Rest’? dissertation.
Lee, C. C., Pan, Z., Chan, J. M., & So, C. Y. K. (2001). Through the eyes of U.S. media: Banging the democracy drum in Hong Kong. Journal of Communication, 51, 345-365.
Luther, C., & Miller, M. (2005) Framing of the 2003 Iraq war dimensions: Analysis of news partisan texts, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 82, no. 1, March 2005, 68-97.
Saleem, Noshina. (2007). U.S. media framing of foreign countries image: An analytical perspective. Canadian Journal of Media Studies, 2(1), 130–162. Retrieved from http://cjms.fims.uwo.ca/issues/0201/saleem.pdf
Seib, P., (2004). The news media and the clash of civilisations. Retrieved 6 August 2013, from http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/articles/04winter/seib.pdf.
Said, E. W., (1997).Covering Islam: How the media and the experts determine? How we see the rest of the world. New York: Vintage Books.
Zheng, B. (2005). China’s “peaceful rise” to great-power status. Foreign Affairs, 84(5), 18-24.
Wanta, W. (1997). The Public and the National Agenda: How People Learn About Important Issues. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Willnat, Lars and Emily T. Metzgar (2012).‘American perceptions of China and the Chinese’. In: 65th Annual Meeting of the World Association for Public Opinion Research. Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China, June 2012.

Muhammad Arif pursuing his Ph.D at the School of Journalism and Communication, Hebei University, China. His areas of research interest include media and globalization, contemporary Chinese media, soft power and propaganda.
Dr. Noor Hayat is an assistant professor in Communication at University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. His areas of research interest are: international communication, portrayal of Islam in Western media and media globalization.