A Case Study Of CGTN And CNN’s Tweets On Image Of China During COVID-19

The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 triggered a global viral pandemic.In this crisis,many parts of the world are physically isolated or closed off.Traditional media are limited in time,space and media carrier,while social media is bucking the trend,which is not only an important channel for global users to obtain protective knowledge,establish epidemic dialogue and discussion.but also a new media front for different countries to release the latest epidemic news,convey their own voices,and dominant the international public opinion and discourse.This major public health emergency have increased the volatility and uncertainty of the world landscape.As an important link among the major countries relation in the21 st century,Sino-US relation have suffered"pandemic and panic shock"after the post-epidemic.The current War of Public Opinion on Covid-19" launched by the US and some western countries is the Sino-US trade conflicts’ s reflection,continuation and escalation.CGTN and CNN are respectively the most Sino-US influential media accounts on the overseas social media platform Twitter.These two have a direct impact on the public opinion discourse on social platforms and the national image in the international community.So,The author made a synchronic and diachronic comparison of the Tweets about China in the first half year of 2020.This paper explores how CGTN、CNN choose the news framework and construct or deconstruct China’s global image,and makes a mirroring comparison.After empirical research,the author found the following three core views:First,the update frequency and the tweets number are positively correlated with the fluctuation trend of the epidemic in China.Within selected samples range,The cycle changes in the tweets scale and attitudes depends on the the epicenter shift between two countries.Second,CGTN’s tweets presented a strongly positive image of China.While,CNN’s portrayal is relatively objective and neutral.On key issues,The two media use more conflict framework.The media and public opinions of the two countries have also escalated from the differences on specific issues to the core contradictions natures.Overall,the confrontation posture were far outnumbered by co-operation callings.Third,CGTN’s tweets position is consistent with the government,express the official voice directly or indirectly.But CNN’s appear to be quite detached from the ruling government.CGTN’s coverages are more focus to show the rationality,restraint and self-confidence of the Chinese government.In contrast,CNN’s has diversified and balanced views towards China.Differ from western media’s general discrimination against socialist countries and smashing China,CNN will acclaim the decisive decision of the Chinese government and criticize the Trump White House.In this study,Python,NLP(natural language processing)and Wordcloud analysis were used experimentally,which combined the quantitative and qualitative methods.It expands the existing analytical methods and enriches the media national image and international communication research.