Research On The International Communication Of Belt And Road Through China's Mainstream Media

With the continuous promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative(hereinafter referred to as "Belt and Road")at home and abroad,the issue of Belt and Road's international communication is increasingly showing its importance.While in the process of Belt and Road's international communication,Belt and Road's international news coverage through China's mainstream media plays an important role.Therefore,analyzing and researching China's representative international media's news reports of Belt and Road has its value and significance both at academic and practical levels.This study,taking 138 news stories with regard to Belt and Road on China Daily-China's mainstream English newspaper from the year 2013 to 2017 as research object,adopting the qualitative research method of discourse analysis,explores the international communication of Belt and Road through China's mainstream media under the guidance of the theoretical framework of ideology.Firstly,this study conducts retrival,numbering,downloading,reading and statistical sorting of yearly and monthly distribution of China Daily's representative news reports on the topic of Belt and Road.It also briefly analyzes news headlines and news topics in order to present the general appearance of the overall news coverage.Secondly,according to van Dijk's two main dimensions of discourse analysis-textual dimension and contextual dimension,we conduct textual analysis on news story and contextual analysis on news ideology.On the basis of the above mentioned textual analysis and contextual analysis,we analyze the 138 news stories' discourse of international communication,and summarize four distinctive discourses of international communication as "audience thinking","expressions of identity","economic prospect"and "humanistic care",we further point out some deficiencies exist in China Daily's discourse of international communication among its Belt and Road news.Afterwards,based on the discourse explorations from textual,contextual,and discursive levels,putting problems in terms of China Daily's international communication of Belt and Road in our mind,we propose four improvement strategies:"opening up people's perspectives","striving for accurate expressions","pursuing cultural elements" and "emphasizing pragmatic cooperation",so as to throw light on the macro-level international communication of Belt and Road through China's mainstream media.The ultimate goal of this study is to provide some references and suggestions for the future development and transformation of Belt and Road's international communication,both practically and academically.