Frame Analysis Of Chinese Mainstream Media's News Covering On Japan, 1972-2008

Sino-Japan relations are very important parts of China's external relations. The up-and-downs of Sino-Japan relations caught the attention of both elites of politics and business and Chinese commons. News coverage is the main channel for them to comprehend Japan and Sino-Japan relations. Thus, a study on Chinese mainstream media's news coverage on Japan is of significance.This study adopts content analysis to examine Chinese mainstream media's daily portrayals of Japan and Sino-Japan relations. 402 samples were gathered from People's Daily during the period of 1972 to 2008. Based on some research over the history of Sino-Japan relations since the two countries normalized their diplomatic relations in 1972, I divided the history into four phases. The Chi-square test results show that, during these four phases, the news reports on Japan from People's Daily are significantly different in tone, news resources, protagonist, theme and topic. That is to say, the news frames of People's Daily's news coverage on Japan are significantly different in the each phase. In Phase I, the news reports focuses on nongovernmental protagonists and cultural communication topics. And the tone is more likely to favor Japan. In Phase II, their focus turns to political themes. And they pays more attention to things happened in Japan and the relationships between Japan and other countries in the world. During Phase III, the anti-Japan tone rises and the theme focus turns to economics. In Phase IV, the protagonists are more likely governmental. And the themes are mainly about politics and cultures.In addition, this dissertation employs crosstabs to examine the relationships between Media frame, Government frame and Public frame on Japan. The Chi-square test results show that, media frame, government frame and public frame are significantly different. Media frame tends to be neutral in tone, and pays more attention on political and cultural themes. And the hot topic is events happened in Japan. Government frame tends to be more favoring Japan and focuses more on Sino-Japan political relations. And political themes and governmental characters appear the most frequently in Government frame. In contrast, Public frame is highly neutral in tone and emphasizes economic and cultural communication and co-operations between China and Japan. Accordingly, the economic theme and cultural theme are taking the leading part. And the main character is nongovernmental.