| Chinese Internet enterprises have seen a rapid rise in the past decade. In2014, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com have made their way into the World’s Top Ten Internet giants by market capitalization. And the largest-ever IPO in history even catapults Alibaba into the second position, closely following Google. Their rapid ascent in the global rankings as well as their intensified efforts to boost global presence has racked up overwhelming international media coverage. Given the western media’s primary role in setting international agenda, their representation of Chinese Internet corporations can wield significant impact on how these companies are received globally.To provide a peek at how Chinese Internet companies are framed in the western media and to facilitate their image-building efforts in overseas markets, this paper conducts a case study of The Wall Street Journal’s framing practice of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd from2004to2014. Alibaba was handpicked as the research subject out of considerations not only for its scale but also for its typicality. As the biggest Internet corporation in China, Alibaba has garnered the most extensive foreign media coverage during the past decade and its success mirrors the vitality of all Chinese Internet corporations. Besides, the headwinds that once threatened to thwart Alibaba’s development in the past decade are difficulties that all Chinese Internet corporations have encountered or might encounter in the future. The WSJ dubs Alibaba as "microcosm" of China’s Internet sector. As a result, the case study of how Alibaba is framed in the WSJ could mirror to a considerable extent how Chinese Internet corporations are portrayed in the western media. The Wall Street Journal is selected as the source of research samples because it has covered China’s social and economic changes since the1970s and it is one of the most trustworthy financial news providers to entrepreneurs, investors and economists around the world. Specifically, all Alibaba-related stories are collected from The Wall Street Journal’s eastern edition, a version dedicated to American readers, because this paper mainly intends to explore the image of Chinese Internet enterprises in the U.S., a country known as the global incubation center for innovation. Dwelling on framing theories, this paper resorts to discourse analysis, specifically, a modified version of Gamson’s media package method (1983), to examine the framing practice of the WSJ. To start with, an inductive coding approach is used to identify major frames used in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage. A frame used for covering Alibaba is identified when the researcher finds a story dealing with a particular aspect of Alibaba. Each frame is then further analyzed for how it is constructed with the use of seven devices, namely comparison, exemplar, catchphrase, depiction, root, consequence and appeals to principles. In addition, this paper also conducts a year-on-year comparison of how Alibaba has been portrayed from2004to2014by counting the frequencies of major frames used in coverage each year as well as examining the tone and discourse used in articulating these frames to determine whether any changes occur in their valences.This paper consists of six parts. Chapter Ⅰ introduces the background that Chinese Internet corporations are emerging as important global players and highlights the significance of studying their western media image. Chapter Ⅱ reviews literature concerning framing and China corporate image before putting forward the research questions for this study. In Chapter Ⅲ, the paper details the methodology from the selection of research subject, data collection and the application of discourse analysis. Chapter Ⅳ describes the six most frequently used frames in the WSJ’s portrayal of Alibaba and documents changes occurring in their uses in the past decade. Chapter Ⅴ discusses the the trend manifested in the WSJ’s framing practice of Alibaba and attempts to account for prominence enjoyed by some frames from the ideological perspective. Chapter Ⅵ summarizes the findings, offers suggestions on Chinese Internet enterprises’ global image strategies, details the limitations of the study and provides suggestions for future research.The study identifies six major frames used by the WSJ in covering Alibaba. They are1) Rise of Alibaba;2) Politicized Alibaba;3) An Opaque Company;4) Stiff Domestic Competition;5) Intellectual Property Rights Violation;6) Alibaba’s Charismatic Founder. The study reveals that as Alibaba grew from a small Chinese Internet start-up to a global Internet giant, the WSJ has demonstrated a growing interest in covering the company. As the number of Alibaba-themed stories saw a surge in the past decade, the WSJ’s representation of the Chinese company became more negative. This trend is manifested both in the increasing use of negative frames such as "Intellectual Property Rights Violation","Politicized Alibaba" and "An Opaque Company", and in the varying valence of how Alibaba has been shaped in the neutral frames including "Stiff Domestic Competition", and "Rise of Alibaba". Even under the generally positive frame of "Alibaba’s Charismatic Leaders", the WSJ has shifted attention from Jack Ma’s aptitude for charismatic leadership to his "opaque" and "disputed" corporate governing and investment decisions. Initially, Alibaba was chiefly portrayed as a company boasting exponential expansion and huge growth potential but later it was shaped more as a representative or "microcosm" of Chinese Internet enterprises which lack transparency, infringe on intellectual property rights and are subject to government interference. Despite the fact that the WSJ occasionally includes scattered evidence of Alibaba making improvements, it makes more systematic efforts to highlight its "deficiencies" and extend the individual case of Alibaba to all US-listed Chinese Internet enterprises by repeatedly reminding readers of similar exemplars and quoting negative comments to offer interpretations. In addition, the paper yields that the framing practice of the WSJ is impacted by the laissez faire capitalism, the cultural theme of individualism and news value.As the first step to examine the foreign media image of Chinese Internet corporations, this paper is complementary to previous studies of how Chinese companies engaging in traditional industries, such as manufacturing, are presented in the western media. Besides, unlike previous studies which resort to synchronic comparison to analyze how different media outlets frame a particular company differently, this paper conducts a diachronic study to examine changes over time in a particular newspaper’s coverage of a particular company, which enriches the existing China corporate image research methods. This research supports findings that Chinese enterprises are often criticized for inadequate disclosure, disrespect toward intellectual property and subjection to government control.(Jessica,2008, Fan,2003, Peng,2014) But it also provides an exception from the conclusion put forward by scholars (Jessica,2008) that Chinese enterprises don’t have charismatic leaders, for Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma is so charismatic that the frame of Alibaba’s founder is given strong prominence. The biggest limitation of the study is that only one Internet corporation is handpicked as the research subject while the paper intends to draw a comprehensive conclusion of how Chinese Internet enterprises as a whole are presented. Though Alibaba is believed to be the most representative of all Chinese Internet corporations, more research subjects could provide a bigger picture. |
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