The Change Of Images Of Chinese Leaders During The General Elections

With the connections between media and the public life, people get to know theworld based on the image built by media. In political field, media has been largelyused by the government and leaders to build their image. During the18th NationalCongress of the CPC, Chinese leaders were just standing under the spotlight andreceived a lot of reports and comments from foreign media. Compared with the16thNational Congress of the CPC, what’s the difference between the images of the twogenerations?This paper attempts to analyze and compare the images of Chinese leaders of thetwo generations based on the reports of New York Times. It will extract three partssample reports, those are, the reports during the four months of the16th NationalCongress of the CPC regarding to the leaders of the fourth generation, the reportsduring the four months of the18th National Congress of the CPC regarding to theleaders of the fourth generation, the reports during the four months of the18thNational Congress of the CPC regarding to the leaders of the fifth generation.Based on content analysis, the present study notices that:1. Leaders of the two generations mostly receive neutral description anddifferent one owns different media image.2. Leaders of the fifth generation owns more well-rounded portrayal. Moreissues regarding to the fifth generation mean that foreign media care about their imageand abilities in more aspects. And also as to the direct description of their image,foreign media talk not only about their appearance and traits, but also their familybackground and previous deeds.3. The foreign media reduce the sense of authority of leaders when reporting thefifth generation, but strengthen their humanity and individuality. It’s helpful to bringChinese leaders and international public closer effectively.