Multiple Media On China's Image And Public Relations Strategy Research In Africa

For a country, image and reputation are important strategic resources. A country fails to establish good national image and international reputation will be likely threatened in its external environment of development and internal environment of social order, even though it is a world power. Narrowing down to the establishment and optimization of China’s national image in Africa, it is endowed with great significance for the reason above. However, it has not aroused due attention, or be focused on discourse struggle with the West, ignoring local media and people in Africa’s perception. From the view of national image, this research selects relevant reports of media representing China, Africa and the West as the research objects, thus builds up a comparably complete structure of comparative study. This research mainly employs content analysis and textual analysis to generalize the target media’s different frameworks and discourses when displaying image of China in Africa, unveiling the “sub‐text of interests” and “sub‐text of culture” beneath this difference, and it also combines public relations theory, attempting to find out a new path of optimizing China’s image in Africa via international public relations.The reason why this research introduces public relations theory is basically the strong coherence to national image building.“Image” can be regarded as the core value of public relations. To establish a good image, we must build up good public relations and social opinion environment through the channels including mass media. Based on the path of international public relations, this research puts forward specific measures, including cultural exchange and cultural products, political lobbying, humanitarian aid and anti‐terrorist peace keeping operation, significant media events, media relationship management, etc., integrating resources, channels and solutions of communication to export content‐rich persuasive discourse of China, and then fundamentally increase the recognition and reputation of “China”, a brand, In African audience. This innovative method could not only help in expanding the academic scope of international communication research, but also in enhancing the feasibility of relevant practice.