Image Representation And Construction Of The Party And Government In The Coverage Of Anti-corruption Issue

Corruption, is one of the most severe social problems in the Chinese society nowadays. Anti-corruption, thus becomes a significant political challenge for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)/Government. The official media coverage, which involves anti-corruption issue, has been an essential part of Chinese government’s "Anti-corruption Campaign". In this kind of coverage, an unavoidable dilemma stands out:How to vindicate the legitimacy of CCP/Government while representing the severity of corruption phenomenon?The paper aimed at this point. By means of content analysis method, this research thoroughly examined the Anti-corruption issue coverage in the People’s Daily during the year 2005-2014. Base on this, the research proceeded with three dimensions, namely the characters, the incidents, and the policies in the coverage, in order to probe the main features of media representation on the People’s Daily. Furthermore, with Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the paper conducted an exhaustive analysis on specific news texts. With all the efforts above, this research tries to reveal how mainstream media cope with the dilemma in such sensitive political issue, and what kind discourse strategies are applied to construct the positive image of the CCP/Government.