Usa Today, "china-related Reports Study

For the last three decades of reform and opening up, China has scored worldwide achievements both in political reform and economic development, and its international status has been greatly upgraded, which has been unprecedented than ever before. While at the meantime, press coverage by foreign media has seen an increasing trend both in their quantities and contents. Thus the image of China in the international community pictured by these news reports has been the focus for the government and academic circles. In light of this, it is important to summarize characteristics of foreign news reports on China, so that it is of great significance to improve international publicity by Chinese media, enhance their competitiveness and set up a positive and sound image for China.With regard to news reports on China by US media, a majority of existing research focus on analysis on media elites such as New York Times and Wall Street Journal. USA Today is one of the top national newspapers in terms of its circulation, and its large coverage of readers means that its selection of news materials should fall into the wishes of the majorities. In this sense, its reports would largely reflect the perspective of general public of American society on China. Thus the purpose of selecting it as the research sample is to study the views and opinions of American ordinary citizen's on China without any consideration on disputes by political parties and elite groups.Based on previous researches on the similar research area, this paper aims to make an analysis on the 468 articles on China on USA Today in 2008 and summarize characteristics, rules and major factors in its news report with the combination of quantitative study and qualitative study, so as to draw a major image of China represented in US ordinary citizens'mind. Starting from analysis on these news reports, this paper attempts to sum up some major misunderstandings caused by differences on cultural, ideology and value perspectives, and discuss certain measures to clear up such misunderstanding adopted by the government and Chinese media when faced with such cultural differences and news reports regular patterns, so that a sound external environment and a positive image of China will be set up.