The Representation of Foreign Politics Through Media Prism: A Case Study of 2008 U.S. Presidential Election Campaign in Mainland Chinese Newspapers

Abstract

As the most powerful nation in the world, the U.S. presidential election campaign drew a lot of attention from the media around the world. This study examines how party-orientation and market-orientation newspapers in China presented 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign to their audience, and how the news serve for the reproduction of domestic dominated ideology and safeguarding domestic political needs. It adopted content analysis and textual analysis as research methods. The results show that Party newspaper tends to serve domestic political ideology, while market-oriented newspapers showed mixed attitude toward political demand. Although market newspapers, out of the concern of political safety, employed some tactic to comply with the demand of dominated ideology to some extent, their cooperation was limited since their main purpose was commercial success and their presentation even destroy the aim of linkage politics for the reasons include acquiring market profit and/or pursuit of professional value. This study is a positive effort to make up the current research gap of studies on international news in Chinese media.