The Impact of Gender Differences and Two Event-Frames in English News Reports on Chinese Non-native English Learners' Emotions to Climate Change

Abstract

News organizations increasingly use event-frames to convey the urgency of climate change; yet, little is known about how different event-frames in English news reports affect Chinese Non-native English learners' emotions to climate change with taking gender differences into consideration. Taking some English news reports on climate change from China Daily as corpus, this study analyses how using different event-frames to communicate messages about climate change to Chinese non-native English readers. Meanwhile, this study experimentally examines how event-frames of the news reports (i.e., on climate impacts, actions) influence Chinese non-native English learners’ emotions, as well as whether the effects depend on gender differences. Results showed that both different event-frames and gender differences have significant influence on Chinese non-native English learners’ emotions. News reports on climate impacts can elicit more fear and more anger for Chinese non-native English learners but less hope compared to news reports on climate actions. As for Chinese non-native English learners, emotion at "fear" and "hope" level has no significant gender differences, while emotion at "anger" level has significant gender differences. Moreover, event-frames and gender differences have a disordinal interaction effect.