A Study On The Characteristics And Network Agenda Of British And American Media Coverage On China’s Poverty Alleviation

Poverty is a common global problem negatively affecting the world and its people,eradicating poverty is thus the basic right of people from all countries to pursue a steady and happy life.Therefore,global poverty alleviation has always been one of the most serious issues in the world been discussed frequently in all areas.On November 23,2015,the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China reviewed and approved the "Decision on Winning the Battle of Poverty Alleviation",kicking off the Chinese fight against poverty.People’s prosperity has been placed in a prominent position in state governance.On February 25,2022,Xi Jinping solemnly declared in the National Poverty Alleviation Summary and Commendation that China’s poverty alleviation campaign has achieved a comprehensive victory:the plague of extreme poverty that Chinese people have suffered for thousand of years has finally been solved,which is milestone in the Chinese history.During this process,media have paid much attention on and reported China’s poverty alleviation campaign from all respects,with domestic research on poverty alleviation reports emerging in a large number.However,in addition to China’s news on poverty alleviation,attitude of the western media and their ways to organize the news worth noticing as well,especially in the post-pandemic era when China keeps trapped in the encirclement of the western media.More than that,as an indispensable actor in the whole process of communication,foreign audiences’ attitude towards China worth exploring as well.Therefore,the article try to find answers to three questions,the first is "how did the media present China’s poverty alleviation campaign,an issue with distinctive Chinese characteristics?",the second is "what issues are often mentioned together with the Chinese poverty alleviation campaign and are they covered in a positive or negative attitude?" and the last one is" what’s the relationship between the media agenda and the public agenda on China’s poverty alleviation,or did the media exert positive correlation on the public’s news choice?"To answer the questions,the article will collect two types of data,including media texts and public texts.The media text research objects includes 8 mainstream British and American media with high international influence:The Guardian,BBC,New York Times,The Financial Times,Bloomberg.CNN.and the Associated Press.The audience texts are collected on Twitter,including the user’s tweets,re tweets and comments.Using NAS as its fundamental theoretical structure and content analysis and discourse analysis as major methodologies,the two parts of contents about poverty alleviation in China from 2021.2.25-2022.2.25 are collected and analyzed.The Research shows that the mainstream media in the UK and the United States don’t have rich coverage on China’s poverty alleviation issues,while a wide range of topics are covered and are mostly presented negative.What’s more,the amount of coverage and negative tendencies on a certain topic show a positively correlation which means that the higher the media pay attention to the issues,the more negative sentiments tend to be given to,such as the agenda "Xinjiang" and "China’s economy".In terms of reporting genres,the British and American media mostly use hard news for an immediate reporting,indicating that the sample media are more likely to present rather than pay in-depth and continuous attention on a certain phenomena.In the China Poverty Alleviation Agenda Network,there shows a significant correlation between the media agenda and the public agenda.However,the ways,angles and tendency of how they present the same agendas or issues are seen different,for example,the latter’s attitude tends to be more positive and stronger than the former.To sum up,the British and American mainstream media agenda has a great impact on the public agenda when talking about China’s poverty alleviation,but compared with the second-level attribute agenda setting that the media will "tell the audience how to think about the issue",the media’s play a stronger role on first(what to think)and third-level(how to think relatedly).In view of the present situation that China’s poverty alleviation researches "focus more on the communication process rather than the effect" and "emphasize domestic coverage but ignoring the foreign ones".Therefore,communication effect and foreign coverages are the two focuses of the study,with the aim to provide suggestions and feasible strategies for Chinese international media better telling Chinese poverty alleviation stories,as well as pronouncing Chinese contributions to the whole world.