Research On China’s Image Of The Beijing Winter Olympic Games From The Perspective Of The Times And The New York Times

In the process of the development of economy,politics and culture,China has realized the importance of international communication,which has gradually risen to strategic level.Under the influence of the "global village",countries around the world interact more and more frequently,and the competition between hard power and soft power is secretly unfolding.Therefore,as an important part of a country’s soft power,the national image is attached more importance by virtue of its important position in international competitiveness.Generally speaking,intensive media reports within a period of time can attract high attention from the international community,and it is easier to construct the image of a country.The framework of media reports will affect the dissemination and understanding of a country’s image.The 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing,which opened on Feb 4,ended on Feb 20 after 14 days of competitions.As a global sports event held during COVID-19,it has attracted the attention of many media.In this study,The Times and the New York Times,which have great influence in the international field and are known as "faithful chroniclers of British society" and "newspaper chroniclers" respectively,are selected as the research objects.The Dow Jones Factiva database was used to collect relevant reports during the Beijing Winter Olympic Games(January 1,2022-March 1,2022)as samples,and the content analysis method and text analysis method were used to carry out detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis by combining the high,medium and low three-level framework of scholar Zang Guoren.This thesis studies and deeply discusses China’s national image and image construction strategies presented by two Western media during the Beijing Winter Olympic Games.The study found that in terms of high-level framework,The Times and the New York Times reported continuously and set the agenda actively according to the trend of the Winter Olympics.The overall topic presented the characteristics of diversification and the attitude of the media was linked with the theme.In the content framework analysis at the middle level,it is found that the two western media give full play to the role of gatekeeper,preferring to express their own positions and attitudes through the mouth of "others",and dig deep lexical relations on the basis of computer semantic analysis.The characteristics of "politicization of sports" of the two Western media are highlighted.In addition,the two media reports on the Winter Olympics have a strong sense of purpose;In the low level expression framework,The Times and the New York Times have achieved overall attitude guidance in the headlines,and the depth of media bias against China can be detected in the lines of news reports.On the whole,The Times and the New York Times adopted a double-sided attitude towards China’s political symbols and nonpolitical symbols in their reports during the Beijing Winter Olympics.They mixed political issues into the factual reports and selected targeted topics to construct an objective image of China from an authoritative perspective.In the end,the two media presented a dynamic China represented by Chinese athletes,a manufacturing China with supporting infrastructure as its strength,and a healthy China with good anti-epidemic results.At the same time,they also used a lot of artificial snow as an excuse to claim that the environment is polluting and unfriendly to China,a powerful China with official rhetoric and an "authoritarian" China with stereotype as an excuse.As Chinese media,we must face up to the image of China in Western media.On this basis,we should think about how to minimize the influence brought by the deviation of national interests and ideology in the news reports of sports events and even other fields,and finally realize diversified communication.On the basis of the common semantic space,we should construct a worldwide semantic space with Chinese characteristics.To break the inherent prejudice of the West and take the initiative in the game of international discourse power is an urgent issue to be discussed.