The Study On Agenda Building And Framing Of Environmental Report

As China’s economy grows rapidly, environmental problems have become increasingly critical issues in China. Environmental issues have always been the focus of international political struggle, which means a new challenge for Chinese mainstream media to fight for international voice.In recent years, the large scale and frequent smog caused by PM2.5 in China attracts broad attention from both Chinese and overseas media. With PM2.5 coverage from People’s Daily, Southern Metropolis Daily, and overseas newspaper as study objects, this paper uses combined method including quantitative and framing analysis to examine two questions: 1. What roles do Chinese party newspaper, Chinese commercial newspaper and overseas newspaper play during the course of PM2.5 agenda building process. 2. What are the differences between the news frames of the three newspapers?This paper finds that Chinese mainstream newspaper is not the only one who sets the PM2.5 coverage agenda. Foreign governments, overseas media, Chinese mainstream media, social media and Chinese government have all contributed to building the agenda. And there are complex interactions and linkages between them.Chinese mainstream newspaper’s influence in setting up the agenda is weak. For instance, Southern Metropolis Daily and overseas media have many similarities in choice of topics and time of report peak. People’s Daily, as China’s most important party newspaper, nearly lost its voice when the PM2.5 agenda started to emerge. Later, People’s Daily increased the coverage on this issue with diversified topics. However, Southern Metropolis Daily and overseas newspaper didn’t response to its agenda. On the contrary, People’s Daily constantly responded to accuses from overseas media and Southern Metropolis Daily, which means People’s Daily’s agenda was set by overseas media and Southern Metropolis Daily.As for the news frame, all the media prefer to attribute this environmental issue to a political frame, but with different perspectives. People’s Daily regards PM2.5 problem as an inevitable development issue which can be solved through development such as preventing pollution, using clean energy and reducing emission. Southern Metropolis Daily regards it as a crisis during which the Chinese government tried to hide information and cannot be trusted. Overseas newspaper deems that China’s political system is to blame for causing PM2.5 problem.With the acceleration of globalization and rapid growth of China’s economy, environmental issue inevitably becomes an important topic in international politics and is easy to be politicized. In face of the double pressure from overseas media and online media, Chinese mainstream newspaper should not only function as watchdog, but also enhance the ability to set agenda and frame so as to fight for international voice for China.