The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers

Abstract

Abstract Media’s framing can affect the public’s opinion and policy debates. Investigating the media’s framing of nuclear energy in China, a country with ambitious nuclear development strategy instead of the trend of global phasing out, can contribute the broader understanding of the linkage between media and nuclear energy development. This paper analyzes the media frames of nuclear energy in China from 2000 to 2016 using reports in two national and two local newspapers. One thousand seventy-nine nuclear energy news reports were collected and coded for analysis using a constructed risk-benefit coding frame, and logit/logistic and ordinary least squares regression analysis methods were employed. The results demonstrate that the Chinese media tends to be supportive of nuclear energy and that the Fukushima accident, in 2011, has negatively impacted on the benefit frames and positively impacted on the risk frames. Moreover, national and local newspapers present different framing patterns. National newspapers tend to be more supportive while the local newspapers either frame nuclear energy through risk or keep silent. The public, media, and nongovernmental organizations are rarely mentioned in the news reports.