Critical Theory Based Study On Intercultural Analysis Of Media Ideology

This thesis intends to analyze differences among news reports from China, Britain and America about the same events. Different economic basis, social circumstances and culture values attribute to huge divergences between Eastern and Western ideologies. Critical Theory from Frankfurt School has been employed in the thesis to analyse ideologies in news reports from China and abroad. As a typical "New Marxism", critical theory from Frankfurt School negates everything while embraces the great truth from everything. Frankfurt School believed that Media were often used as tools by ruling class in maintaining their ideology and transmitting their will and system. Actually media itself is ideology. Empowered by Stuart Hall's communication theory, the theory of encoding-decoding best evaluates transmission effect of news reports, thus illustrates how the ideology has transmitted to readers.This thesis aims to conduct comparative intercultural analyses on Shanghai World Expo English news reports from China Daily, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, The Times and The Sunday Times. Similarities and differences in ideologies among these news reports are carefully studied. The research is divided into three parts:(1) 146 headlines of news reports from Chinese Media,86 headlines from British Media and 34 headlines from American Media have been selected for title comparison through the software CoOccurrence; (2) 152 news reports from Chinese Media, 60 news reports from British Media and 50 news reports from American Media have been studied through the employment of CoOccurrence; (3) Through thorough study, news reports with the same topics from Media of the three countries have been chosen for discourse analysis so as to reveal the ideologies hidden behind.Conclusions have been made in the following three aspects:(1) In terms of discourse approaches, news reports from China tend to utilize an argumentative approach characterized by distinct viewpoints while news reports from UK and America incline to adopt a narrative approach, transmitting their ideologies through the selection of facts; (2) As regards to diction, news reports from China usually employ more functional words while media from America and Britain habitually use notional words especially nouns; (3) In respect to narrative perspectives, China Daily tend to emphasize government's efforts toward Expo and its achievements while American and British Media such as Los Angeles Times and The Times are concerned more about tourists' feelings in their Expo tour and tips for their visits. Finally, the thesis summarizes the research on ideology transmission among Estern and Western media in terms of language and narration strategy, and the limitation of the study is also discussed.