Frame Analysis Of The South China Sea Issues Reported By Asahi Shimbun

In recent years,the South China Sea Issue has become the international hot news.Since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Inauguration,Japan has shifted its national defense emphasis from East Sea to South Sea in terms of territorial dispute.It besets and contains China's maritime strategy,building maritime military alliance in Asia-Pacific region against China,which deteriorates China's marine environment to a great extent.In addition,Japanese media pays great attention to the South China Sea issue.This paper takes Asahi Shimbun,a major medium in Japan,as the research object.Under the frame theory,the author takes content analysis and text analysis as the main research methods,combining journalism and communication with science of international relations to study the report frames about South China Sea during 2012 to 2016,totally 407 pieces of Japanese news.The research result shows that Asahi Shimbun's reporting focuses on factual presentation,conflict and accountability frames.Asahi Shinbun reported in detail about the South China Sea situation,actions and attitudes of different countries,especially the conflicts and frictions happened in South China Sea region,and commented the whole issue in the interests of Japan.It takes good advantage of news tactic,for example,standing out its opinion by borrowing the criticisms and negative comments on China from other countries,or taking a balanced way to make the reports more neutral.However,on the whole,the negative information weighs much over the positive one.In addition,the author analyzed the influence that international relations,medium system and social culture had on the frames of China related reports,and raised corresponding strategies for China to cope with the problem.The author expects that this paper can improve people's knowledge of China related reports made by Japanese media and give full play of the mass media in adjusting national relations.In the meantime,this paper is expected to improve China's external communication tactics,helping China grasp the discourse in international competition,set up good a national image and effectively prevent the false accusation from other countries.