Western media coverage of the telecommunications and electronic media industries of China, 1999--2004

The telecommunications and media industries (TEMI) of China have experienced rapid growth in the past few years. As a participant in the global economy, China has earned worldwide attention due to the potential economic return based on its recently reformed, market-oriented telecommunications and media industries. Since the Western media dominate in news coverage around the world, research on the image of China's TEMI as reflected in those media could help to understand the changing reality there.; This dissertation examined news about China's TEMI distributed by the Western media from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The BBC and CNN were selected as representative Western media and were submitted to content analysis. The research is grounded in the theoretical frameworks of the agenda-setting theory, the framing theory, the reality constructed by mass media, and the determinants on foreign news coverage. Questions about China's TEMI were included, especially how China's TEMI was framed on the news agendas of Western media. Due to the nature of the research questions being asked, the method of content analysis was applied qualitatively and quantitatively for tracking trends and frames over time and examining the image of China's TEMI constructed by Western media.; This research concluded that the image of China's TEMI was framed by Western media through public exposure to industry topics, the uses of news perspectives, sources, and thematic frames in news reporting from year 1999 to 2004. The image was enriched by the various concepts and contexts in industry news and the narrative attitudes used in news presentation. News reporting was often situated in the China's economic and political context, and those concepts were highlighted. The conflict between economic development of China's TEMI and its political environment appeared on the agendas of Western news media. The research findings have theoretical and practical implications for future media content studies.