The Construction of Tibetan Image in American and Spanish Media

Abstract

Due to its geographical location and multi-ethnic background, Tibet has always been a hot isseue for West. The New York Times and El Mundo, the representative media of the United States and Spain respectively, have covered Tibet in a large number of reports. While the American and Western governments have very different attitudes toward China, the media in the two countries have similar coverage of Tibet. This paper adopts Guoren Zang's three-level structure as the theoretical basis for the study and analyzes the two newspapers, finding that although there are positive reports, they are mainly negative and mostly involve political aspects; there are fewer reports on Tibet as a major event, but mostly secondary events; both newspapers tend to cite persuasive sources and are good at rhetorical strategies. Finally, the author proposes opinions and suggestions on the results in order to build a better image of Tibet and China.