Comparative Analysis Of Media Narratives Of Population Issue

News media is influential in shaping the public opinion. However, news reports are not the reflection of the reality. Affected by the power form both inside and outside the news organization, journalists always choose a proper news frame, which is acceptable for all the stakeholders, to report a specific social issue. By framing the news, journalists can strength or hide some information, which may influence the view of the public towards the society. How the population growth affect social development is under heated debates for ages. As to the majority, the most influential opinion is from Malthus. However, an increasing number of evidence shows that the core concept of the Malthusian theory-population growth will result in social crisis-is not reliable.In this dissertation, I examined news reports on One-child policy reform from People's Daily and The Guardian and found that although the Malthusian theory is proofed to be unreliable, mass media still follow the path that Malthus offers to describe the relationship between population and social development. When reporting the population issue, People's Daily and The Guardian are deeply influenced by the Malthusian theory; besides, political and economic power in the society also affects the content of the news. Framing analysis combined with content analysis will be used in this dissertation to analyze the sources of news, the stance of news and how did these two newspapers framing the population issue.