The New York Times And China Daily Framing Of Events During Olympic Torch Relay Of 2008

There has been a lot of international attention to the interactions between China and the U.S., two of the world's superpowers, which is often framed in news narrative. In the increasingly globalized world, news narratives about international events are gaining greater cross-cultural attention, especially since the news media can play an active role in external communication. However, news media is can active social construction, bringing in each cultures'shared history, which sometimes leads to conflict when the narrative contradicts certain values in other cultures. Exploring the construction of language in news narrative, thus, has implications in cross-cultural relations and external communication. In this article, using the framing analysis method presented by Zhongdang Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki, I take an exploratory look at the discourse behind the coverage of the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay from two different sources. The samples come from The New York Times and China Daily, which occupy similar market clientele; the China Daily is the largest English-language newspaper in China. The analysis reveals cultural ideological packages inherent within the narrative that come from mutually exclusive signature matrices; thus, future external communication must take these elements into consideration in creating cross cultural text.