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How does China view “the West”?:

A Content Analysis of Foreign News Coverage of CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo Xiaodong Zhang

11896655 Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Communication Master’s Program Communication Science

Dr. Mark Boukes (Supervisor) University of Amsterdam

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Abstract

The current study investigates how Xinwen Lianbo, a prestigious TV news program and a key propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party, framed a bloc of Western countries in its early 2010s’ foreign news coverage. The results of a content analysis revealed a mixed and diverse image of the West as portrayed by the program. Interestingly, since Xi Jinping took office in late 2012, more negative frames of these countries were identified, signaling a pivotal moment in terms of China’s foreign policy. Xi’s speech to Chinese media workers in August 19, 2013, on the other hand, did not make an additional impact on the program’s framing of the West.

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Introduction

Unlike domestic news, foreign news is not directly connected to an audience’s daily life. When newspapers and television report a story of a foreign and distant land, audiences often find themselves unable to fact-check the story by simply recalling their knowledge base and first-hand experience (Entman, 2004; Lim & Seo, 2009). For ordinary audiences, the truth and facts behind an ongoing international event are often intangible and difficult to comprehend. Their perceptions of a certain foreign country, therefore, are heavily influenced by their government and the domestic media’s framing of it. In Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur’s (1976) media dependency theory, it was said that such media coverage could cast impacts on audiences at cognitive, affective, and behavioral levels. For instance, when American media covered Iraq back in 2003, they successfully had many audiences believe that a country somewhere in the Middle East was developing weapons of mass destruction which could endanger the US’s national security, even though the narrative was later proven to be false (Moeller, 2004).

In the case of China, the government and media’s power in shaping public opinion toward foreign countries is arguably even more salient. Unlike Western democracies, China’s lack of press freedom means the Chinese media, on most occasions, are bound to report international events under the propaganda department’s guidance with very little room for alternative interpretations (Shambaugh, 2007). Furthermore, the public also have limited choices of news reporting channels; this is especially considering the existence of “the Great Fire Wall”, which cuts off the Chinese public’s access to global internet. For a considerable share of the Chinese public, especially those who live in rural areas, Chinese official media are the only channels with which to be informed about international society and from which to form an opinion on countries belonging to “the West.”

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In the past, Western media’s framing of China has yielded quite some insightful findings and unveiled some similar patterns, such as the enduring “friend vs. enemy” frame (Stone & Xiao, 2007; Golan & Lukito, 2015; Ooi & D’Arcangelis, 2018). Chinese media’s framing of Western countries, however, has not yet been fully explored by academia. Among all Chinese media, China Central Television’s (CCTV) daily primetime news program

Xinwen Lianbo (新闻联播, literally “News Simulcast”) is undoubtedly the most dominant channel for international news dissemination. The present study intents to investigate Xinwen Lianbo’s framing of Western countries in recent years by conducting a content analysis, and answer the following research question:

How did Chinese official media (CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo) frame "The West" in the beginning of the 21st century

Derived from Vremya, of Soviet Central Television, Xinwen Lianbo is an extremely important propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party. In its framing of “The West,” it is able to represent the official voices of the Chinese leadership. Claiming an average daily viewership of as many as 135 million (The Economist, 2016), Xinwen Lianbo also has a strong penetration rate among the Chinese public, as many viewers, especially those from rural areas, heavily rely on it as their sole channel for keeping in touch with current affairs. Since its debut on January 1st, 1978, CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo has been the most influential television news program in China: Not only do CCTV’s own channels air the show at 19:00 daily, all provincial TV stations in China are obliged to also air it simultaneously, making Xinwen Lianbo virtually the only choice for Chinese audiences who want to watch TV news during the time period of 19:00 and 19:30. A study of Xinwen Lianbo’s framing of “The West”, therefore, has the potential to reveal Chinese leadership’s attitudes towards the Western world and, consequently, how the Chinese public probably views the rest of the world.

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Theoretical framework

Studying frames and framing has long been an enduring and conventional approach in communication research. Different from agenda-setting, framing deals with the next stage of news production, as it is a process which handles “the presentation of issues” (De Vreese, 2005, p. 53), which influences how the public perceives and interprets a certain fact. In the case of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, different media outlets employed drastically different frames (attacks by the Republicans vs. responses by the Democrats) to interpret the same event, which directly or indirectly affected their viewers’ attitudes towards the U.S. President (Shah, Watts, Domke, & Fan, 2002). When conducting a media content analysis, framing helps to understand how media contents could potentially have an impact on the attitudes and behavior of viewers (Chong & Druckman, 2007).

Entman (1993, p. 52) defined framing as “the process of selecting some aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient in a communicating text.” Entman also proposed four major functions of framing, which are “defining problems, diagnosing causes, making moral judgments, and suggesting remedies.” De Vreese (2005), similarly, defined framing as a process of emphasizing the importance of different aspects within a topic. More importantly, he identified two phases of framing: frame-building and frame-setting, which correspond to how a frame is chosen and produced in the newsroom and how the frame is eventually delivered to and interacts with the audiences.

In the context of the Western media industry, many scholars believe the phase of frame-building is a joint-effort constructed by multiple players, such as journalists, editors, politicians and even audiences (Entman, 2004), during which every player holds and exerts their individual influences on how a frame is selected and produced. For instance, journalists can write the texts according to personal preferences and interpretations; editors can delete and modify the contents into the narrative he or she likes; and investors and advertisers can

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steer their influences on the content by applying pressure from outside (McManus, 1995). In fact, the perception which believes that different roles can all play a part in this process is also in correspondence with the hierarchy of influences model proposed by Shoemaker and Reese (1996), which categorized a system of powers that can steer the production of media contents.

In China, its lack of press freedom has made such an open and competing frame-building process not always applicable, especially in terms of a top state-owned media outlet such as CCTV. Despite its marketization and commercialization in the past decades, media in China are still highly regulated by the government to date. Studies that focused on

contemporary Chinese media system have argued that, for high-profile Chinese media institutions, namely the “big three” (Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily, and CCTV), political propaganda tasks remain to be their primary daily objective (Winfield & Peng, 2005; Shambaugh, 2007). These top state-owned media normally are directly-owned and funded by the Chinese central government, and accordingly serve no other purposes than acting as the mouth-pieces of the Party and the government.

These media’s special status imply that their frame-building process are often not conducted in a dynamic arena or a public town hall, but in a back chamber where only Party elites are present. For instance, in the recent event of Xi’s constitution amendment to abolish his term limits, only the party-approved frame that describes the decision as “positive

progress” seemed to be allowed, while alternative frames and interpretations were seriously underrepresented in the Chinese media (Al Jazeera, 2018).

As a flagship news program of CCTV, Xinwen Lianbo’s frame-building process has also been predominantly influenced by Communist Party elites (Shambaugh, 2007). The propaganda guidance from the Party and the government, consequently, shapes the contents of this program from an ideological and extra-media level on a daily basis. As such, an

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effective message delivery channel from the Communist Party to the public via Xinwen Lianbo has been formed. Meanwhile, the show’s significant viewership base and its

officially-granted monopoly on the 19:00 Chinese TV news market have also made its frame-setting process drastically different than any Western TV news program. A 2012 news credibility survey (Lei, Shen, & Xue, 2012) conducted by Chinese scholars indicated that Xinwen Lianbo was the most trustworthy one among nine selected Chinese broadcasting news programs. This demonstrates its potential discourse power in shaping public opinion towards certain issues via frame-setting process.

Framing a foreign land

Frame-setting processes and framing effects, arguably, become more salient when they concern reporting about a foreign country, because ordinary domestic audiences neither hold much knowledge of international affairs, nor can they acquire this kind of knowledge through day-to-day experiences. Therefore, citizens are more likely to be convinced by what the media has to say about a foreign country, as compared to media’s coverage of a purely domestic event (Lim & Seo, 2009). Past studies of how media may frame a foreign country has identified and categorized two widely-adopted paths: how do media perceive the foreign country’s relationship with their native land (relationship path); and, how do media evaluate the foreign country’s own well-being and predict its future development (well-beings path). For the relationship path, media tend to frame a foreign country as either a friend, a partner, a cooperator, or, as an enemy, a threat, a rival of the home country; a “friend versus foe” frame has thus been developed. In Lim and Seo’s (2009) research, the authors conducted a content analysis on The New York Times’s framing of North Korea during a 4-month period in 2002. The research found that “friend” (dialogue partner) and “foe” (military threat) were the two most visible frames employed by the newspaper, and these two frames were often competing with each other and were able to co-exist within one media institution. Similarly, a

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content analysis which looked into Soviet newspapers’ framing of the Soviet-Afghan war also demonstrated how Soviet media were inclined to frame the USSR as a good friend of the Afghan people who came to rescue and help, while simultaneously framing the U.S. as an evil enemy who came to support terrorists (Erzikova, Haigh, & Sampiev, 2016). As China and Western countries are often perceived to have both conflicts and mutual interests with each other, I therefore expect to detect similar patterns in Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage of the West.

For the well-beings path, media tend to make evaluations about a certain foreign country based on how this foreign country is doing and how well-functioning it is. This evaluation process corresponds with Entman’s (1993) proposal of the major functions of frames, such as “diagnosing causes” and “making moral judgments” (p. 52). It could involve a variety of objective or subjective evaluations of economic, democratic, educational,

environmental and societal conditions of the targeted country. For instance, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post largely framed South Asian countries, such as India and Pakistan, as lands of crime, disaster, and conflicts in the 90s, with coverage focusing on events such as religious conflict, epidemic disease and non-functional governments. On the other hand, frames such as science and technology, progress and arts, or achievement were much less visible in the two papers’ coverage of these countries (Poornananda, 1998). By comparing the differences between US wire services’ framing of developing countries and developed ones, Giffard (1984) found that the well-beings path is widely employed. Giffard suggested that even though every country could face crises such as “coups and earthquakes” (p.12), in these US wire services’ coverage of a bloc of developing countries, such negative frames were made more salient and visible.

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Framing of China on Western Media

As an emerging power with the world’s biggest population, China is consequently getting more and more attention from Western media. Western media’s framing of

contemporary China (since the Communist Party seized power in 1949) was historically associated with Sino-West relations and had an abundance of “friend and foe” frames (Stone & Xiao, 2007; Golan & Lukito, 2015; Ooi & D’Arcangelis, 2018). By reviewing American magazine’s coverage of Mao Zedong and China under his rule during the Cold War, Yu and Riffe (1989) found that the framing of Mao’s China was closely correlated with the

development of Sino-American relations. They found that in the 1950s China was portrayed as “Red Communist” with hostile undertones, as China then was a close ally of the USSR and a vocal advocate of anti-West imperialism. In the 1960s, Sino-Soviet relations quickly

worsened and then created an opportunity for China and the US to break the ice and start a dialogue. American media then started to frame China in a more neutral manner, as a

potential partner to work with. Starting from the US President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, the 70s saw even more friendly coverage of China in American media, with a “semi-ally” undertone emphasizing the possibility of U.S.-China co-operation against Soviet threats. Yu and Riffe, therefore, demonstrated that American media has effectively reflected

Washington’s foreign policy towards China during different time periods.

In additional, the well-beings path was also detected in Western media’s framing of China. For instance, a content analysis of German newspapers’ coverage of China from 1986-2016 demonstrated German media’s mixed attitudes towards modern China. These papers noticed and highlighted China’s economic achievements, framed the country as

“economically strong”, but politically they still reported skeptically about China’s lack of democracy and its unpleasant human rights record, which lead them to deem the country as “not democratic” and “different and strange” (Wilke & Achatzi, 2011, p. 359).

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So while there is some scant research on how China has been framed by Western media, even less has been on the opposite perspective: how the Chinese media have framed Western countries is still mostly unknown. Current studies regarding content analysis of Chinese media have mostly started from a comparative perspective and investigated the differences in coverage of a chosen issue (such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic in China, NATO’s air strikes on Kosovo) between Chinese media and Western media (Yang, 2003; Wu, 2006). In BBC’s country rating poll of 2017, it suggested that the Chinese public held somewhat mixed views towards the Western world: for countries like the United States and Japan, the Chinese public held negative views towards them, but for Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the Chinese public responded with favorable opinions (BBC, 2017). The potential correlations between the Chinese media’s framing of Western countries and the Chinese public’s opinion towards these countries demonstrates the societal relevance of the present study.

Based on the relationship path and well-beings path discovered from the existing research, there are six frames expected to be found in my research sample:

For a foe frame, I intent to identify if the news story portrays Western countries as aggressive and hostile to China and detrimental to Chinese national interests. For example, “A joint military exercise was conducted by the US and Japan on the East China Sea, demonstrating the US-Japan Alliance’s insecure mentality in coping with China’s rise”.

For a friend frame, I will identify if the news story demonstrates a peaceful, friendly and co-operative image of Western countries. For instance, “a trade agreement has been signed between China and the EU, with an expectation to lower tariffs and boost mutual trade volumes”.

For a sufferer frame, I intent to identify if the news story focuses on a mishap in Western countries; this could be both natural hazards or man-made accidents. For example,

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“A tornado hit parts of the US, causing severe casualties and homelessness”; “A Germanwing Airbus aircraft crashed in the Alps, with official reports suggesting no passengers or crew members have survived.”

In an enjoyer frame, this paper will identify if the news story covers a festival, a celebration or any other stories which demonstrate the happy and prosperous life of Western public. For instance, “the King’s Day celebration in the Netherlands starts today in

Amsterdam, with locals and tourists joining the canal parade to celebrate the Dutch King’s birthday”.

With the failure frame, the goal is to identify if the news story reports on a scandal, a misconduct or a disorder which has happened in Western countries. For example, “the

financial crisis in the Euro zone has continued to deepen, with experts warning of its potential negative effects on the global economy”; “Protesters used ‘Black Live Matters’ as their

slogan – why are African-Americans still deeply discriminated against in American society?”. Contrarily, the presence of a success frame is to identify if the news story reports on an achievement, a progress or a breakthrough made by the West. For example, “NASA landed a new spacecraft on Mars, advancing mankind’s recognition of the planet”; “an evolutionary discovery made by Japanese scientists which could help cure some diseases”. What’s “The West”

Besides “framing”, the concept of “The West” or “Western Countries” also need to be clarified. “The Western world, or simply the West, refers to a bloc of countries that are formed from three distinct traditions: (1) the classical cultures of Greece and Rome; (2) the Christian religion, particularly Western Christianity; and (3) the Enlightenment of the modern era” (Kurth, 2003, p.5). To put “the West” into practice, Kurth (2003) proposed the member states of NATO as the best representation of Western Countries. Since the starting point of this thesis is investigating how contemporary official Chinese media have framed “The West”

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in the background of China’s emergence as a global power, I propose to adopt and adapt Kurth’s definition of member states of NATO (as of 2017).

In my own version of the list of Western countries, NATO member states Turkey and Albania (countries with significant Islamic culture backgrounds) will be excluded, while five non-NATO European countries (Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and Austria), two Oceanian countries (Australia and New Zealand) and Japan will be included. The reason Japan has been included is not only because it is a strong ally of the American-led Western world, but also because of the long-standing perception among both Japanese and Chinese intellectuals who categorize the earliest industrialized Asian country as more of a culturally and institutionally European country than it is an Asian one (Fukuzawa, 1885; Yang, 2006). In total, there are 35 countries labeled and included as a Western country in this present study.

Hypotheses

As one of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s top propaganda tools, Xinwen Lianbo has often been criticized as lacking neutrality. Chang and Ren (2016) mentioned that Xinwen Lianbo was granted the official status as the country’s most authoritative news channel, thus burdening itself with the heavy tasks of speaking as a party mouthpiece while completely disregarding newsworthiness and objectivity. Remarkably, the Chinese public has also been ridiculing the show’s very predictable daily airing schedules as “the three

segments”: (1) how busy our leaders are today, (2) how many achievements our country has made, and (3) how miserable are the lives that foreigners are enduring (The Economist, 2016).

As Zhao (1998) mentioned, the Communist Party faces increasing internal questions of its own legitimacy in the post-Tiananmen era, therefore it needs nationalism and anti-Westernism campaigns to maintain its authoritative rules and to distract the public’s attention from other domestic problems. The American-led Western world is seen as a hostile power which consistently intends to implement a “peaceful revolution” (Hepin Yanbian) or a “color

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revolution” (Yanse Geming) in China, in the name of bringing democracy, but with the underlying agenda of turning China into the next Russia, Ukraine, or even Syria to halt China’s rising trajectory (Ong, 2007). My study, therefore, expects consistent negative frames of Western countries on Xinwen Lianbo.

H1: Xinwen Lianbo consistently framed a Western country as “an enemy”, “a sufferer”, or

“a failure” (i.e. negatively) more than as “a friend”, a “enjoyer” or a “success” (i.e., positively).

My study also proposes to include Xi Jinping’s presidency as a variable. Xi Jinping assumed office as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese President in late 2012. Xi’s ambition of becoming one of the most powerful and authoritative leaders in modern Chinese history has driven his government to enforce more regulations and

manipulations on the media (Wong, 2016). The NGO Reporter Without Borders which ranked China at 176 out of 180 countries/regions in its 2017 Global Press Freedom Index deemed Xi as “the planet’s leading censor and press freedom predator” (Reporters Without Borders, 2017).

One may expect that under Xi’s administration, the Party and the government will exert increasing power over the media’s content production, especially in the case of a top propaganda tool like Xinwen Lianbo. Additionally, Xi has demonstrated his determination to defend national identity and security by rejecting Western values, ideologies, and even popular cultures in Chinese society (Buckley, 2013). For instance, Xi openly praised a young nationalism opinion leader who wrote controversial blogs overflowing with anti-West

sentiments (Wong, 2014). Therefore, more negative frames of Western countries are expected to emerge starting from Xi coming into power on November 15, 2012.

H2: Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage of “The West” contained more “enemy”, “sufferer”, and

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I further propose August 19, 2013 to be the other potential pivotal moment of Xinwen Lianbo’s content production during the period that Xi has been in power. On this day, Xi Jinping hosted a “national propaganda work convention” in Beijing and made a historical speech which was later reported as the “8/19 speech”. In this speech, Xi stressed the importance of defending the Communist Party’s own ideology and the government’s determination to tighten control of media and public opinion. Xi called out Chinese media workers, demanding them to stay alert to the invasion of “universal values of The West” such as democracy, human rights and press freedom, as these values are not applicable to and are in fact detrimental to Chinese society (Huang & Zhai, 2013).

H3: Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage of “The West” contained more “enemy”, “sufferer”, and

“failure” frames (i.e. negative frames) after Xi made the “8/19 speech”. Methodology

A quantitative content analysis was conducted on Xinwen Lianbo’s daily news coverage of Western countries. The main intention of this study was to detect changes in news framing over the duration of a long time period. A quantitative content analysis, which investigated a considerable sample of the Chinese foreign news, was used to enable my study to achieve this objective. Since Xinwen Lianbo is a television news program, textual, visual as well as audio variables were coded and analyzed.

Sample

Xinwen Lianbo is a primetime daily news program which airs 365 episodes per year, and every daily episode contains approximately 10 minutes of foreign news. Since the earliest archive accessible on Xinwen Lianbo’s official website at the time of compiling this research is from late 2009, I chose to fix the time frame as from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015. The chosen time span covers approximately three years before and after Xi

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presidency as a variable affecting the change of frames. During these 6 years, an average of 36.5 episodes were systematically randomly chosen per year, meaning one episode will be selected from every 10-day interval.

A total amount of 220 episodes of TV news were collected from the official website of Xinwen Lianbo. 1106 news items were identified as foreign news, within which 529 items (n = 529) were further identified as news regarding Western countries or organizations, accounting for 48% of the whole sample. The other 52% was identified as news that reported on non-Western countries or organizations, and thus, is not relevant for this study.

Variables and Reliability

The proposed six frames (foe, sufferer, failure, friend, enjoyer, and success) were measured by presence (1) or absence (0) and then coded as binary data. An inter-coder reliability test was conducted beforehand. The two independent coders were both native Chinese speakers and graduate students majoring in communications. Approximately 9% of the whole sample (48 items) were randomly chosen for the test. The Krippendorff's Alpha indexes of all 24 tested variables (questions) ranged between .61 and .90 (average α = .75), indicating sufficient reliability for all the measured variables. Below, the specific inter-coder reliability statistics for each frame are given.

For foe and friend frames, news items were measured with five and four questions respectively based on a self-developed codebook. These questions were developed based on four aspects: whether the news item contained contents which (a) described the country as an adversary or a friend of China; (b) described the country as a negative or a positive factor to global and regional peace and stability; (c) quoted an official of the country who said negative or positive comments about China, or vice versa; (d) quoted a non-official of the country who said negative or positive comments about China, or vice versa. Once a news item presence had been detected for at least one of the asked questions, it was coded as a

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presence of the foe or friend frame. The inter-coder reliability test for the friend frame (α = .78) and foe frame (α =.79) proved to be adequate.

For sufferer and enjoyer frames, four and three questions were asked, respectively. Each item was coded by: whether it contained contents which (a) were regarding a mishap or a celebration in the mentioned country (b) demonstrated the hardships or happiness of the citizens of the country (c) quoted an interviewee who said unhappy or happy comments about his or her life and the society in general. Items which answered “yes” to at least one of the asked questions were identified as a presence of the sufferer or enjoyer frame. The

Krippendorff's Alpha index for enjoyer frame was .78 while the sufferer frame was at .89. For failure and success frames, news items were measured with four questions each. Questions were developed on the following aspects: whether the news item contained

contents which (a) described a negative development or a progress of the country in the field of economy (b) described a negative development or a progress of the country in the field of politics (c) described a negative development or a progress of the country in the field of science, technology, culture, and society. News items which answered “yes” to at least one of the asked questions were identified as a presence. The Krippendorff's Alpha index for success frame was .73, while for the failure frame it was .75.

Analysis

To accurately test the hypotheses in which no distinction is made between the types of negative or positive frames, I categorized friend, enjoyer, and success frames as three

attributes under a positive frame, while grouping the other three as attributes of a negative frame. When an individual news item was detected as containing at least one of the three frames, it was coded as a presence of a positive frame (i.e., friend, enjoyer, or success frame) or a negative frame (i.e., foe, sufferer, or failure frame).

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Having collected and prepared the data, three pairs of statistics were analyzed to test the corresponding hypotheses: (1) the proportion of positive frames within the whole sample size versus the proportion of negative frames within the whole sample size; (2) the proportion of negative frames within the recorded items before Xi took office, compared to the

proportion of negative frames within the recorded items after Xi took office; (3) the

proportion of negative frames within recorded items after Xi took office, but before he gave the 8/19 speech, compared with the proportion of negative frames within recorded items after Xi gave the 8/19 speech.

Results

Among these news items regarding Western countries, the US was the most visible country, with a frequency of 216 times being mentioned. Countries and regions such as Japan (84), the UK (56), France (35), the EU (34), Germany (25), Australia (19), Greece (15), Italy (14), and Canada (11) were also given high visibility in Xinwen Lianbo’s foreign news section, as each of them was mentioned more than 10 times throughout the study timeframe. Countries such as Slovakia, Bulgaria and Latvia, on the other hand, were not mentioned at all. Among all recorded news items regarding Western countries, 13% detected a friend frame, 8% detected an enjoyer frame, and 26% detected a success frame, whereas 12% detected a foe frame, 14% detected a sufferer frame, and 25% detected a failure frame.

Having coded all 529 news items (n = 529), a total of 233 were identified as negative frames (enemy, sufferer or failure), whereas 200 were identified as positive frames (friend, enjoyer or success). The proportion of negative frames within all news items (44%) was somewhat bigger than that of positive frames (38%). However, consulting the p-value (0.107) of a McNemar Test for paired nominal data (i.e., categorical variables in the same article), the difference between the two categories was not statistically significant (see Table 1).

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Hypothesis 1, which stated that negative frames were overwhelmingly more present than positive ones in Xinwen Lianbo’s framing of Western countries, shall be rejected.

Table 1. Comparing negative frames and positive frames (n = 529)

Positive frames Total % of n

Negative frames No Yes

No 115 181 296 56% Yes 214 19 233 44% Total 329 200 529 % of n 62% 38% McNemar Test Asymp. Sig.(p) 0.107

In November 15, 2012, Xi Jinping assumed office as the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party and People’s Republic of China, replacing the former President Hu Jintao. The current study proposed to consider this date as a turning point of Xinwen Lianbo’s framing of Western countries. The results of content analysis found that there indeed was an increased presence of negative framing in the program’s coverage of the West.

Before Xi came to power, 303 news items were recorded within that sample period, among which 113 contain negative frames. The proportion of news items that contain negative frames within recorded news items during the corresponding time frame was 37%. After Xi assumed office, the corresponding proportion rose considerably to 53% (see Table 2.1). The p-value (<.001) of a χ2-test that compares proportions shows that the increase of negative frames proved to be statistically significant. The second hypothesis was, therefore, validated, meaning that Xi’s presidency is correlated with an increase of negative frames in Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage of the West.

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Table 2.1 Xi’s presidency as a variable affecting negative frames (n = 529)

Xi Assume office as Chinese leader (Nov 15, 2012)

Negative frames Before After

Yes 113 120 % of Before/After 37% 53% No 190 106 % of Before/ After 63% 47% Total 303 226 529 Chi-Square Test Asymp. Sig. (p) 0.000

Additionally, I investigated how the presence of positive frames changed after Xi became Chinese leader (see Table 2.2). The proportion of news items that contained positive frames within recorded news items during the corresponding time frames decreased from 45% to 28%. Consulting the p-value (0.000) of a χ2-test, the proportion change was statistically significant: news about Western countries became less positively framed after Xi became the leader of the Party and the country.

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Table 2.2 Xi’s presidency as a variable affecting positive frames (n = 529)

Xi Assume office as Chinese leader (Nov 15, 2012) Positive frames Before After

Yes 136 64 % of Before/After 45% 28% No 167 162 % of Before/ After 55% 72% Total 303 226 529 Chi-Square Test Asymp. Sig. (p) 0.000

My third hypothesis introduced Xi Jinping’s speech in August 19, 2013, as the other potential variable affecting Xinwen Lianbo’s news coverage of Western countries. To eliminate Xi’s presidency as a potential confounding variable, I chose to only analyze the data collected after Xi took office in November 15, 2012, meaning the sample size for this hypothesis test will be 226 news items (n = 226). The hypothesis assumed that after the speech was given (164 news items recorded), the program’s negative framing of the West would increase, compared to the (relatively short) period after he assumed office, but had not made the speech yet (62 news items recorded).

The results, however, demonstrated no such pattern. Before his speech, 33 negative frames were identified, accounting 53% of all. After the speech, 87 negative frames were detected, meaning the proportion of negative frames within the recorded news items during this period was also exactly 53%. The proportion of negative frames remained the same (see Table 3.1). The hypothesis shall be rejected: Xi’s speech has not affected Xinwen Lianbo’s framing of the West.

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According to Table 3.2, the proportion of positive frames within the news items that were recorded during the corresponding time period, unexpectedly, saw a growth from 19% to 32%. However, consulting the p-value (0.071) of a χ2-test, this change in proportion was not statistically significant.

Table 3.1 Xi’s 8/19 Speech as a variable affecting negative frames (n = 226)

Xi’s 8/19 Speech (Aug 19, 2013)

Negative frames Before After

Yes 33 87 % of Before/After 53% 53% No 29 77 % of Before/ After 47% 47% Total 62 164 226 Chi-Square Test Asymp. Sig. (p) 1.000

Table 3.2 Xi’s 8/19 Speech as a variable affecting positive frames (n = 226)

Xi’s 8/19 Speech (Aug 19, 2013)

Positive frames Before After

Yes 12 52 % of Before/After 19% 32% No 50 112 % of Before/ After 81% 68% Total 62 164 226 Chi-Square Test Asymp. Sig. (p) 0.071

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In order to investigate whether the inclusion of Japan as a Western country had an effect on the outcomes of the content analysis, I further repeated the three hypotheses tests excluding news items exclusively regarding Japan: the results remained the same, with the first and third hypotheses being null whilst the second being validated. The inclusion of Japan as a Western country, therefore, did not deviate the results of this content analysis.

Discussion

Having completed a content analysis on Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage of Western countries from 2010 to 2015, the study has illustrated a mixed and diverse image of the contemporary Western world which Xinwen Lianbo has framed for its Chinese audience. The proposed notion that Xinwen Lianbo would overwhelmingly and consistently frame the West in a negative manner was not reflected in this study. This created image may be understood from the nature of modern Sino-West relations: even though China and the Western world still hold significant ideological divisions in the 21st century, and Chinese leadership still maintains vigilance facing the possibility of a “peaceful revolution” orchestrated by the West (Ong, 2007), the country has built strong economic ties and cooperations with Western countries over the past decades. International relations scholars such as Buzan (2010) and Qin (2003) believe that Chinese leadership saw itself as a status-quo power and have made considerable efforts to integrate into the Western-led world economy. The leadership’s perspective was that China considers its relationships with the West as not only challenges, but also tremendous opportunities. As the mouthpiece of the Chinese government, Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage of Western countries more or less reflected these mixed feelings that Chinese leadership holds towards the West. This finding also validates Lim and Seo’s (2009) research conclusion, which noted that opposite and conflicting frames are often able to compete and co-exist with each other within one media institution.

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The significant growth of negative frames and decline of positive frames around Xinwen Lianbo’s portrayals of Western countries after Xi took office reaffirms Shambaugh’s (2007) proposed notion, which stated that Xinwen Lianbo’s frame-building process was largely influenced or even dominated by Communist Party elites. When a new party leader assumes power, the program’s frame-building correspondently changes to reflect his foreign policy doctrine. The higher frequency of negative frames since Xi’s presidency started might have signaled a pivotal moment in China’s foreign policy under his administration. Since China initiated its “reform and open” path in 1978, the leadership in Beijing has been maintaining a somewhat conservative foreign policy strategy for decades, which was

condensed and coded by former leader Deng Xiaoping as Taoguang Yanghui: keeping a low profile and never claiming leadership (Chen & Wang, 2011). However, many have observed Xi’s determination to abandon the Taoguang Yanghui strategy and his ambition to challenge the current American-led world order (Masuda, 2016; Ferdinand, 2016; Wong, 2018). Masuda noted that Xi’s foreign policy perspective for this generation is Fenfa Youwei: striving for achievement, which could be found in many of his initiatives such as One Belt, One Road and the efforts of reclamation and construction in the South China Sea. Masuda believed that China’s “assertive behaviors” since 2012 should be interpreted as “unified, intentional development by Beijing.”

As the top propaganda tool of the Chinese government, Xinwen Lianbo has delivered the message of a foreign policy change under Xi’s presidency. For example, the show

reported on Washington’s struggle to stabilize post-war Iraq in June 19, 2014. The news item framed America’s involvement in Iraq as a total failure throughout both the Bush and

Obama’s presidencies, then further made connections with US interference in Syria at that time. The Americans were framed as incompetent world leaders, a negative factor affecting world peace, and a military hegemony without moderation. By framing the United States as a

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military threat to regional stability, and making “moral judgement” (Entman, 1993, p.52) about the country’s foreign policy, such a news item was coded as both a foe and a failure frame. This news item, therefore, could potentially reflect Beijing’s increasing doubts of American global leadership.

When Xi addressed Chinese media workers in August 19, 2013, it was expected that more influences from the leadership would be enforced on Xinwen Lianbo’s frame-building process afterwards. The results of the content analysis, however, did not indicate such a development. This may be understood by the fact that China’s media control, especially towards stated-owned institutions like CCTV, was historically already strong and has never loosened (Shambaugh, 2007). Xi’s speech might have tightened liberal-leaning and market-driven media’s narrative space, but did not cast much effect on the already heavily-regulated flagship mouthpiece that Xinwen Lianbo is.

The results of this study also revealed another interesting phenomenon: countries such as the US (216 times) and Japan (84 times) have much higher chances to be reported by Xinwen Lianbo, whilst some countries are less frequently reported and some are completely unmentioned. The disparity of visibility of different countries mirrored some existing theories in academic research. Firstly, as Galtung and Ruge (1965) mentioned in their study, which focused on the structure of foreign news, events which refer to elite nations have better chances of becoming news; this explains why elite nations like the US (sole world

superpower and the biggest economy in the world) and Japan (the third largest economy just behind China) were the two most mentioned countries in Xinwen Lianbo’s foreign news section during these years. Chang (1998) also proposed similar insights, as he noted core countries in the world system have better chances to be in the international news flow than peripheral ones. Secondly, Japan’s high visibility on the program reflected how geographical and cultural proximity (Eilders, 2006) came into play in the selection of foreign news: due to

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these proximities, events that took place in Japan are inherently more newsworthy for Chinese media than those of other (less nearby) Western countries. Moreover, as Buzan (2010) proposed in his research about the rise of China, Sino-American and Sino-Japanese relations remain two pairs of the most crucial diplomatic ties perceived by Chinese leadership, thus heightening the frequency of news items regarding these two countries in this program. Limitations

There are two main drawbacks to this research. Firstly, the sample size for the test of Hypothesis 3 was relatively small, especially for the short time period between Xi assuming office in November 15, 2012 and before him giving the speech on August 19, 2013 (n = 62). However, the result illustrated that there most likely was no change to the proportion of negative frames before and after Xi’s speech (both 53%), indicating the chosen date was somewhat irrelevant for the framing of Western countries by Xinwen Lianbo.

Secondly, the unpredictable and contingent nature of major global events might have affected what the sample looked like. For instance, Greece was frequently recorded during the long-lasting Greek government-debt crisis from 2009 to 2015. The crisis not only boosted Greece’s visibility on Xinwen Lianbo, but logically was also often identified with a failure frame which was interpreted by the program as an example of how the Western economy is failing itself and the world. Had the crisis not happened, a country like Greece probably would not have received equivalent (negative) attention from Xinwen Lianbo, and probably would not have contributed much to the observations of failure frames. Nevertheless, as most content analysis research would also encounter such developments in the real (political) world, this is an inherent issue of all longitudinal analyses.

It is also worth noting that Xinwen Lianbo is a very influential but unique case within the Chinese media landscape: it is directly owned by the central government and is heavily-regulated in all its forms. The program, therefore, can hardly reflect the dynamics of the

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modern Chinese media landscape – it is more of an outliner which mainly acts as a platform for disseminating Beijing’s political messages. For future research, scholars could look into how propaganda-driven media like Xinwen Lianbo differ from market-driven media such as Toutiao and The Paper in terms of their framing of the West, respectively. The latter

platforms are not directly state-owned, but are in the hands of corporate bodies (mainly technology giants) such as Alibaba and Tencent. Content analysis of Chinese media’s framing of neighboring countries such as the Koreas, Singapore, and India, could also generate insightful knowledge.

In conclusion, Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage of the West was not overwhelmingly focused on framing a Western country as an enemy, a sufferer, or a failure more than it was on framing it as a friend, enjoyer, or a success throughout the years sampled in this study. Western countries, according to Xinwen Lianbo’s coverage, could be a foe or a friend, a sufferer or an enjoyer, a failure or a success during the same time frame. Since Xi Jinping became Chinese leader in late 2012, however, China’s foreign policy has started a transition towards a more assertive direction. Correspondingly, this content analysis found more negative and less positive frames of Western countries on Xinwen Lianbo from that time, indicating politicians’ (especially in the context of Chinese media system) capability in influencing media institution’s frame-building and content production processes. Xi’s speech on August 19, 2013, on the other hand, did not make a difference to the show’s coverage of the Western world. As a top propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party, Xinwen Lianbo’s foreign news section serves its purpose as a political message disseminating platform.

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