Research On The Framing Analysis Of China-related "Carbon Emission Reduction" Issue In The New York Times

With the increasingly prominent negative impact of global climate change and the deepening cooperation and conflict between countries in climate-related issues,"carbon emission reduction" has gradually become a hot topic in the domestic and international community.From the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to the successful signing of the Paris Agreement,China’s actions and role in the field of Climate Governance have attracted more and more attention.Through the use of literature,content and discourse analysis,and under the guidance of relevant theories of communication,sociology and political science,this paper comprehensively discusses the reporting frame and framing process of "carbon emission reduction" issues about China in the New York Times,deeply analyzes the influencing factors of its framing process,and discusses how to respond.In the process of framing,the New York Times chooses the "material" for constructing the reporting frame by selecting the news source and background information,constructs the factual materials through the consideration of the report theme,the establishment of the report tone and the matching of the report genre,and then completes the organization of the news discourse through the construction of the news text structure and the flexible use of rhetorical strategies,and finally,reporting frames is realized and conveyed through the deployment of the scale of coverage.We could find that the New York Times has constructed four types of frame for China’s "carbon emission reduction" issues--the frame of disaster,responsibility,conflict and cooperation.The main factors affecting the reporting frame of "carbon emission reduction" issues include macro situational factors,organizational factors and personal factors of journalists.The macro factors mainly include the "politicization" shift of climate change issues,the uneasy imagination of western countries on China’s rising state and the position conflict in the climate negotiations between China and the United States.The media organizational factors include the political slant of the New York Times itself,business pursuit and environmental news view,and the personal factors of journalists include the subjective bias of journalists,the ability to obtain first-hand information and the cognition degree of reporting topics.Taking the New York Times as an example,the western mainstream media has paid more and more attention to China’s carbon emission reduction commitments and targets,but its reporting frame still has a certain tendency.Therefore,we need to identify the "double standard" of western mainstream media on "environmental justice",recognize the negative impact that its tendentious reports may have on China,and finally improve our coping strategies and tactfully tell China’s story of "carbon emission reduction" to the world.