A Framing Analysis Of The Times On The Revolution Of1911

The Chinese revolution of1911demonstrated the unprecedented changes forthousands of years of Chinese history to the whole world, completely different fromany previous peasant uprising, the revolutionaries not only want a regime change, butto overthrow the Qing dynasty Manchu ruler established; to complete the nationalrevolution, the emperor to be deposed, and to establish a republic country. Theupheaval shocked the world, journalists from other nations put themselves into thereporting in succession. The Times reacted swiftly, and reported in a timely manner.This paper collected the reports of the revolution in1911-1912on The Timesnewspaper as samples, considering domestic and international situations, utilizing theframing analysis theory to summarize the reporting frame and to figure out theinfluencing factors behind. All these are based on the the analysis of the news reports,editorials, and other columns on The Times.Through the text material in the newspaper, we found that The Times set twonews frames during the whole report process, one is "remain neutral and await-and-see attitude" frame in the early Wuchang Uprising, another is "supportingconstitutional monarchy first and boosting Yuan to seize the power" frame in theNorth-South Negotiation. Under these two news frame, The Times newspaperconduced formally impartial reports with the Revolutionary and the Qing Court,which was a mere coincidence with the British government foreign policy. But soonafter the North-South Negotiation, The Times gradually shifted its reports focus onYuan Shih-kai and boosted him to win the dominant position of the conference. Then,this accurate and objective well-known unofficial newspaper had formed a specificnews frame. This paper’s main purpose is to figure out frame building process, andwhat factors contributed to the establishment of the frame. Also to probe into how theframe affected the development of the Revolution of1911, how to evaluate suchreports frame.The dissertation tried to serve as a supplement to the international disseminationof research in the context of modern foreign newspaper reports relating to China andSino-British relations, as well as the Western media reports concerning Chineseaffairs.