Signalling media professionalism: comparative social constructions of RT and CGTN

Abstract

ABSTRACT The messaging content of Russia Today (RT) and China Global Television Network (CGTN) provides alternatives to those offered in mainstream western media. Comparative studies point to RT’s aggressive, ideological rhetoric and CGTN’s more tacit, celebratory, and culture-focused approach. This study adds to these understandings by examining how messaging strategies construct media professionalism – one of the four historic pillars of media systems analysis – to delegitimize media systems of rival states and build credibility of their own platforms and by assessing the dialectical role of key oppositional voices to Western media hegemony in the digital sphere. Using a mixed methods approach, we analyzed thousands of RT and CGTN’s Facebook posts across language accounts between 2017 and 2022. The study documents that RT and CGTN utilise arguments by comparison to assess competing news outlets and redefine scholarly modes of assessing media professionalism. The study identified four metrics used by RT and CGTN to evaluate media professionalism: source attribution, adherence to positive news values, distinctions from negative news standards of competing outlets, and relative commitment levels to free expression. It further reveals differences in RT and CGTN’s language-based, message targeting in relation to media professionalism.