Canada's twenty-first century discovery of China: Canadian media coverage of China and Japan

Abstract

ABSTRACTChinese government officials and some Canadian foreign policy experts have challenged the content and tone of Canadian media's coverage of China. Canadian media coverage is thought to negatively bias public opinion and thereby constrain foreign policy choices available to policymakers. Scholars of Canada–Japan relations worry that decreasing media attention could have longer term effects on bilateral ties. Through an analysis of over 30,000 articles appearing in three major Canadian news publications over a 15-year time span (2000–2015), we identify how news about these countries is framed to the Canadian public and how these frames change over time. Our central finding is that the Canadian media experienced a “twenty-first century discovery of China” in 2004–2005. The volume of coverage of Chinese economic news spiked, while coverage of political rights declined, portraying China as a leader in the global economy and therefore a viable economic partner. Yet we find that media coverage is only loosely tied to public opinion. Counterintuitively, Canadian attitudes toward China have become more negative with increased positive news coverage, while declining coverage of Japan is correlated with increasingly positive views of the country.