How Foreign Media Reports Evaluate Weibo And Quote Weibo Messages

With the advent of the Internet era,Weibo has become one of the information dissemination platform with rapid development in China in recent years.It shows a increasingly strong social influence.Weibo has both social attribute and medium attribute.It is one of the most important platform for public expression,and has also become an important source of foreign media reports about China.In order to examine the image of weibo in foreign media reports,this paper follows the path of frame analysis,and uses the method of content analysis and text analysis to analyze 210 reports on weibo from the New York Times,the Washington Post,The Times,the Telegraph,the Guardian and the Straits Times.The first part,the paper's introduction,introduces the background of weibo and explores the practical significance of foreign media reports on weibo.The second chapter discusses the frame theory which is mainly used in this paper,and summarizes the previous researches of the foreign media reporting weibo.The third chapter summarizes the research methods and research ideas of the thesis.The fourth chapter and the fifth chapter are the main body of this paper.The fourth chapter analyzes the usage of weibo in foreign media reports from the five aspects of numbers,sources,content subjects,tones and frames.The fifth chapter mainly studies the role of weibo in foreign media reports,and analyzes the strategies of foreign media using weibo messages to construct their reporting frame.The sixth chapter discusses the findings,and then points out the shortage of the research and what can be improved.The study found that weibo in foreign media reports usually provides news sources,indicates the public position and constructs the frame of the report.Foreign media basically showed a relatively positive attitude towards weibo.They regarded it as a relatively free expression platform for Chinese public,and also a highly efficient and flexible way of public supervision.The public opinion collided with the government in this platform.However,foreign media conveyed a lot of criticism on the censorship of weibo from authorities.Through the analysis of the image of weibo in foreign media reports and the characteristics of news coverage by foreign media with the use of weibo,we can take a look of the image of China in foreign media reports,and also provide some suggestions for the development of weibo and the communication strategy of Chinese media.