Topic Mining and Evolution of U.S. Mainstream Media Reporting on “Belt and Road Initiative” (2013-2023)

Abstract

The year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of the the Belt and Road Initiative. A comprehensive analysis and evaluation of mainstream media reports in the United States offer valuable insights into the overall understanding and strategic trends of the United States over the past decade. Such insights hold significant importance for shaping the future development of the Belt and Road Initiative. This study utilizes Factiva’s extensive self-compiled “Belt and Road Initiative” news corpus, employing social network analysis, multiple correspondence analysis, and co-occurrence network analysis to visualize the topic distribution and evolution in American media reports on Belt and Road Initiative. The identified topics in American “Belt and Road Initiative” reports encompass transportation, finance and trade, diplomacy and politics, science and technology, ecological environment, and medical care and health. From a diachronic perspective, the evolution of US “B&R” reporting unfolds in three distinct stages. The period from 2013 to 2015 is characterized by a focus on macro-policy reports, shifting to economic and technological reports from 2016 to 2019. The subsequent stage, spanning 2020 to 2023, centers on ecological sustainability and debt reporting. Furthermore, this study observes that the content of US “B&R” reports exhibits a pronounced political nature, gradually leaning towards characterizing Belt and Road Initiative as China’s geostrategic layout for developing countries.