The National Image Of China In New Media Enviroment: A Case Study Of China-related Posts In U.s. Blog Website Huffingtonpost.com

Foreign traditional mainsteam media has been the main way to understand the national image of China.The study of China-related reports in the foreign traditional mainsteam media, especially in the American traditional mainsream media is one of the hotpots in the academic research in recent years.As one of the new media, blog is an important way for the new generation of audience to get information and it has also become a part of journalism in the United States. The study of China-related blog posts in the U.S. blog website should be an important supplement. But the researches on the blog are scarcely seen in the existing study, especially lack of empirical data.This paper selected the huffingtonpost.com as its main study target. By using the methods of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, this project was trying to make a picture of the national image of China in the new media environment. Based on the review of the existing related research, this paper only focuses on the China-related blog posts in the huffingtonpost.com,which published from May 9^th 2005 to May 9^th 2010. It looked at two emphasis of the study which relative to national image of China: the distribution of issues and the tendencies of the contents of these articles. The research found that politic and economy were the most prominent issues, which with the largest number of posts relate to human rights, China-US relations and trade. The image of China tends to be portrayed negatively in most of China-related post in huffingtonpost.com.