Research On The Representation And Reception Of China-related Reports In British Newspapers

The researches on the image of China in the world mainstream media or on the China-related reports by the world mainstream media and their audience analysis fall into the category of intercultural media studies in the field of cross-cultural communication research. Jia Yuxin has pointed out that, with the rapid development of domestic and international media, mass communication has become a more and more important interaction channel between different cultures. As a result, intercultural media studies, or cross-cultural media studies that involve mass-mediated communications between two or more cultures, should be readily accepted by intercultural communication as its legitimate domain.Intercultural media studies encompass analyzing intercultural media texts and analyzing intercultural media audiences and effects. The former includes the study of the representation of exogenous cultures in domestic or foreign media texts. Studies related to the national image fall into this category. Currently, researches in intercultural media effects are sporadic and unsystematic, and there are still many academic gaps to be filled. This thesis compares the differences between the British and Chinese readers in interpreting China-related reports of the British newspapers from the perspective of cultural and national identity, which, the present author hopes, will play a complementary role to researches in this field.The present author has visited a lot of news on websites of6British newspapers to research how these newspapers represented China in their political, economic and social news items and how the people from Britain and China perceive and interpret the political, economic and social constructions of China produced by these online news websites. With the reference of other related studies, this thesis studies the reports on China in British newspapers in2010and analyzes the construction of China in British newspaper and the perception of China by different audiences through a combination of quantitative research and qualitative investigation and a combination of content analysis with audience analysis. Finally the thesis summarizes the framework of newspapers in constructing China as well as framework of audiences in interpreting China.The main findings are:different ideologies and interests lead to differences between representations of China’s political, social issues and economic issues; different national identities lead to different ideological frameworks of the British reports on China.In recent years, most of the researches on China-related reports in intercultural media studies in China are analyses of selected typical reports, yet there is not much reliable data or research on differences between Chinese and Western audiences in interpreting the China-related reports. This thesis uses software SPSS for quantitative analysis, conducting a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the empirical data collected on the news websites. Through comparing the cognitive differences between the Chinese and English readers, the value of China-related reports research in terms of the differences between Chinese and Western cultures and national identities is highlighted, In addition, most of the domestic thesis on similar subject is written in Chinese, but this thesis is composed in English, which is more readable to the Western audiences and is favourable toward cross-cultural academic exchanges.