The Study Of Three Gorges Project’s Media Image Construction

With the wide spread of the mass media, the media has already become an important window for people to understand the world, how the media constructs the world affects the audience’cognition importantly. Major national projects is an important manifestation of national strength, and national strength is the prerequisite and basis of the image of the country, to study how the mainstream media to construct the image of the major projects is particularly important in the context of international reshaping the image of the government. Three Gorges Project is the only project decided through NPC, its political overtones higher than others. Based on the framing theory, this paper has a special study of news frame on the Three Gorges Project media image construction.This study adopts content analysis to examine Chinese mainstream media’s daily portrayals of the Three Gorges Project.1506samples were gathered from People’s Daily during the period of April3,1992to December31,2012. I divided the study of Three Gorges Project into five phases, the Study found that, in terms of the number of reports, in ordinary years the number kept balance, but some special years reported more. In the items of thematic coverage, it was wide range, the construction-related reports got top focus, then the theme about immigration, the environment, humanities spirit and the construction in Three Gorges area, the political behavior reports made a great part. In the form of expression, most of the reports occupied page1and2, the engineering evaluation reports usually got attention easiest, the political behavior reports longer and more occupied front page, and construction-related reports relatively shorter and with more pictures. In the items of reports sources, the reports always came from the journalists of People’s Daily and the Xinhua News Agency, authority and concentrated. In the items of report tone and genre, most were positive and engineering evaluation articles’s title always with Chiaki Albert, national epic, the pride of China and other praised vocabularies to describe the Three Gorges Project, the Three Gorges Project reports follow the traditional propaganda frame.People’s Daily reported in a different frame at different phases in study about the Three Gorges Project, the political reports got less and less, and the project management and how to play its role, the project effectiveness reports gradually increased, in different phase, the news frame give prominence to different elements, so, in the five phases, there are five frames, which are preparatory mobilization frame, building advocacy frame, mental advocacy frame, prominent management frame and special attention frame.