The interplay of politics, ideology, and culture in news framing of President Xi's first state visit

In the context of globalization, the media plays a significant role in constructing perceptions of another culture. When constantly expanding understanding of different societies, misperceptions of another culture may also emerge. This is especially true for the current Sino – U.S. relations, as mistrust has been found from both countries in the recent poll. At the time of discouragement and pessimism, Xi Jinping, China's president and the chairman of China's Central Military, arrived in Washington on September 22nd, 2015 and started his first official state visit in the U.S. This study examined media coverage of President Xi's first state visit in order to explore the power dynamics of ideology, politics, and culture between China and the U.S. Conducting comparative media research between U.S. and China breaks through the traditional UK and U.S. basis of communication study, which allowed communication scholars to be aware of non-western journalistic practices and be more sensitive to the global context. A quantitative content analysis with a qualitative assessment of overall frames were used to identify the way The New York Times and the People's Daily framed President Xi's first state visit. Results showed that both The New York Times and the People's Daily chose to highlight and interpret certain aspects of the trip, which led to different general assessments for the visit. There were five frames identified in their coverage, namely the anti-China frame, provocateur frame, recognition frame, great-leader frame and description frame. In addition, the distribution of quoted sources and issue salience were also found to be different in reports of The New York Times and the People's Daily. Possible ideological, cultural and political forces were elaborated upon in order to explain the coverage differences between the two newspapers.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (M.S.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Journalism and Media Communication

Grantor dc:publisher

Colorado State University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Authors dc:creator

• Lan, Di, author
• Plaisance, Patrick Lee, advisor
• Kim, Jangyul Robert, committee member
• Khrebtan-Hörhager, Julia, committee member

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.

Language dc:language.iso

eng, English

Identifier URI

https://doi.org/10.25675/3.018846

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mountainscholar.org:10217/181316