A News Media Representation on Disability and Information Accessibility in China from the Perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Based on critical discourse analysis, this paper takes thirty news articles related to disability and information accessibility from three Chinese news media as its research object to explore themes that describe how Chinese news media reflects and constitutes its understanding of disability and information accessibility. By doing this, it intends to reveal the themes of those articles and identify potential prejudices, illusions, and stereotypes that may influence the disability. This paper aims to address the following two questions: 1) What content exists in mainstream Chinese news media concerning disability and information accessibility? 2) What themes do these discourses present regarding disability and information accessibility? The results show that 1) The content of thirty news articles includes introductions, evaluations and advice of apps related to information accessibility, activities promoting information accessibility, audiovisual works with information accessibility, and official policies regarding information accessibility; 2) Five key themes are found in these discourses, which are discourses of problem-solving, criticism, awareness as advocacy, self-congratulations or overly optimistic judgments and a tendency of elderly-oriented over disability. Through the analysis of these themes, this paper concludes with implications to advance the development of information accessibility for disability.