English-language News Media Research Articles

Communicating climate futures: a multi-country study of how the media portray the IPCC scenarios in the 2021/2 Working Group reports

The way governments and policy makers think about climate futures has a wide-ranging impact on how they formulate policy and plan for climate change impacts. In the lead-up to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), the IPCC adopted a new scenarios framework that aimed to provide a fuller picture of the interacting elements and policy choices that affect climate change. However, these scenarios, known as Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), are complex and difficult to communicate. Most audiences, including policy makers, receive much of their information about climate change from mainstream media, and particularly online news sites. We therefore examined the five most popular online news sites in the UK and the USA, five popular English-language news sites in India, English-language news media from a wide range of African countries, and the Reuters News agency. Based on manual content analysis to assess 252 articles, we identify several important findings, amongst them: in all countries, the media provide little detailed explanation of how scenarios are developed, very little mention of SSPs, and virtually no detailed explanations of them; generally, journalists use the words ‘projections’, ‘futures’, and ‘pathways’ when talking about the IPCC scenarios, although some usage of ‘predictions’ or ‘forecasts’ is apparent; contrary to previous research, there were very few doomsday narratives such as ‘only 12 years to act’. We conclude by drawing out some implications for more effective communication of the IPCC scenarios.

Media representations of the ‘little fresh meat’ phenomenon in China: a feminist critical discourse analysis of the masculine nonconformity discourse

ABSTRACT ‘Little fresh meat’ (LFM or xiǎo xiān ròu), which describes a masculine aesthetic rooted in ‘soft masculinity’, is a phenomenon across Asia that challenges prevailing concepts of masculinity and patriarchal discourse. This study furthers previous research by using feminist critical discourse analysis to evaluate the construction of LFM masculine nonconformity, via data collected from 42 news articles from China’s English-language news media, including: China Daily, Global Times, People’s Daily Online, Shanghai Daily, and Xinhua News Agency. The analysis generated three key themes: (1) market driving a female consumer fan base, (2) challenging hegemonic masculinities when men wear makeup to imitate their ‘idols’, and (3) criticisms of gender stereotypes. These themes show how a masculine nonconformity discourse is developed by using a variety of discursive strategies in China. This study highlights the need for increased awareness and education regarding gender diversity and the harmful impacts of gender stereotypes on Chinese society.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Resistance to Climate Change in China’s English-Language News Media

ABSTRACT Climate change has become a global issue, but no study has examined the discursive construction of resistance to climate change as part of crisis response in the media. To fill this gap, this study employs Wodak’s discourse-historical approach to examine 82 news articles collected from China’s English-language news media. The analysis reveals three themes used in the construction of a discourse of resistance to climate change: (1) climate change as a global enemy, (2) China as a leading climate change fighter, and (3) other nations as China’s allies in the fight. These themes are articulated in the news stories using discursive strategies such as nomination, predication, argumentation, and mitigation. The article sheds light on the language state-run news media uses to project China’s image abroad and encourage international collaboration and action in the fight against climate change. It also illustrates how discourse analysis can illuminate the geopolitical and sociocultural dimensions of climate change.

Looking Japanese: representing gender, privilege, and multiracial beauty queens in the media

ABSTRACT In 2015 and 2016, Ariana Miyamoto and Priyanka Yoshikawa became the first and second “hāfu” (half; multiracial) contestants to be crowned Miss Universe Japan and Miss World Japan respectively. Following their win, they were alternately ignored in mainstream media, lambasted online for not being “jun-nihonjin” (pure Japanese), and celebrated for heralding a multiracial and multiethnic Japan. I explore these discourses by examining how the two beauty queens were represented in Japanese-language and English-language news media and Girls Channel, an online forum popular among young women. Drawing on discourse analysis, I argue beauty pageants are important sites for understanding how race, gender, and ethnicity are complexly constructed in Japan. On one level, this stems from Japan’s racialized ideologies of nation and long history of subjugating racioethnic minorities, but on another level, it is intertwined with classist and gendered beauty ideals of looking Japanese in beauty pageants. Looking Japanese is also informed by what I call “racialized privilege,” invisible unearned advantages conferred upon jun-nihonjin based on their racioethnicity and, for women, tied to lineage (one’s ancestors) and colorism (preference for lighter skin). Ultimately, this article aims to decenter EuroAmerican-centric media research on gender, beauty, and racioethnicity.

Quoting Chinese Political Discourse through Translation: An Analysis of Xi Jinping’s Climate Change Discourse in English-language News Media

Climate change is a heated topic that attracts media and political attention. Previous research has analyzed political discourse using different approaches from various perspectives. However, few studies have investigated the recontextualization of Chinese political discourses in the mass media via translation. This study analyzes how President Xi Jinping’s discourses on climate change are translated and represented in the Chinese, British and American media. It draws on political discourse analysis and the narrative theory conception of quoting, including direct, indirect and mixed quotations. The study analyzes a selection of Xi’s translated quotations through manual coding and examines Chinese and English news outlets’ speech representation. The quotations are interpreted in their socio-political contexts and in relation to aspects such as journalistic conventions. The findings show that these factors contribute to the narrative shifts observed between institutional translation and news translation. The study provides insights into cross-cultural communication and the role of translation in shaping public opinion on important global issues such as climate change.

Tradition, modernity, and the visual representation of “leftover women” in the English language news media in China

ABSTRACT This study examines the visual representations of “leftover women” (unmarried women who are 27 or above) in the English language news media in China by employing multimodal discourse analysis. The findings show that both conservative and gendered discourses are constructed by different visual resources in relation to “leftover women’s” actions, reactions, outfits, symbolic processes, and settings. Our research provides new understandings of Chinese single womanhood, which reflect the State profamily and pronatalist agenda intertwined with the pressure from tradition on the one hand, and women’s increasing awareness of individual choices, sexual freedom, and feminist values under the influence of globalisation and modernisation on the other.

COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in English-language news media: retrospective cohort study

ObjectivesTo describe COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and track trends over time in traditional news media.DesignRetrospective cohort study of a large database of online articles, July 2020–June 2021.SettingEnglish-language articles from 100 news...

A Corpus Analysis of Rural Representations in English-language News Media in China

China, the world's most populous country, has a sizable rural population. From this point of view, rural China's focus can serve as a lens into global rural issues and poverty. This article employs corpus analysis to examine media representations of 'rural' in China Daily newspapers from 2001 to 2021, focusing on rural areas. Findings show that the rural social system in the twenty-first century is more diverse and complex than in the previous century. Economic development is the most frequently discussed factor in rural transformation development (RTD). Additionally, unlike the idyllic life described in previous studies, the Chinese news media are relatively objective and forthright about negative development issues.

Resisting Foreign Hostility in China’s English-language News Media during the COVID-19 Crisis

ABSTRACT Studies of crisis communication have increasingly used a critical approach to shift the focus of research from how crises are managed to the role of social power and ideology, but little is known about the discursive construction of resistance in response to global health crises. To fill this niche, this article uses critical discourse analysis to investigate how China’s state-run media resisted what it deemed to be undue foreign hostility towards China over the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Based on an analysis of 63 reports in China’s English-language news media, the article finds that the Chinese media developed a discourse of resistance via three main strategies: enemification, victimisation and heroisation. These strategies draw on a variety of linguistic mechanisms, specifically argumentative topoi, nominations, predications and metaphors. The discourse of resistance constructed by the Chinese media has implications for how nationalism and humanitarianism are practised and promoted in China. The article shows that the state-run media constructed a discourse of resistance as part of China’s response to the COVID crisis, to help shape China’s national image and to convey its geopolitical messages to the world.

A Discourse Analysis of News Media Articles on the Polish ‘Rule of Law Crisis’

Abstract The article identifies the discursive characteristics of news media texts covering Poland’s ‘constitutional crisis’. Following the conception of discourse presented in Laclau and Mouffe (1985), i.e. as an articulatory practice that conveys meaning through a structured system of positions and differences, the article highlights some features of English-language news media texts (e.g. from the Guardian, Telegraph, Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post) that can be described as typical. The following features are identified: a lecturing tone, the use of structural oppositions, immediate rebuttals, misrepresentation, appeals to expertise, and the sovereignty taboo. These features are diagnosed as contributing to the narrow discursive range covered by news articles. To shed light on this narrow range, the article presents three conflicting positions from Polish legal theory that address the issues of constitutional courts, the rule of law and national sovereignty: Ryszard Piotrowki’s legal constitutionalism, Paweł Bała and Adam Wielomski’s Schmitt-inspired position, and Adam Sulikowski’s reading of the constitutional courts as an instrument of hegemonic discourse. In the conclusion it is suggested that news media discourse would benefit from demonstrating a greater awareness of other discourses, and from developing a more generous, balanced approach to presenting and addressing their claims.

Media Framing of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Health Issues and HPV Vaccine-Related Sentiment in English Language News Media in India (2015-2018)

Media Framing of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Health Issues and HPV Vaccine-Related Sentiment in English Language News Media in India (2015-2018)

Media representations of ‘leftover women’ in China

The term ‘leftover women’, commonly referring to single women older than 27, has been in popular use in Chinese media since 2007. This study investigates how leftover women are linguistically represented in the English-language news media in China by employing a corpus-assisted approach to critical discourse analysis. A specialised corpus of 303 English news articles (i.e. 236,254 words), covering the years between 2007 and 2017, was built for this purpose. Corpus linguistics techniques were employed to quantify the meaning shift units (MSUs) of the lemma leftover WOMAN, and van Leeuwen’s ‘social actors and actions theory’ was applied to inform the classification of MSUs in context. These findings shed light on media representations of leftover women, the contested ideologies emerging from these representations, and how shifting gender politics and identity shapes and is shaped by media in the world’s most populous nation.

Bullshit journalism and Japan: English-language news media, Japanese higher education policy, and Frankfurt’s theory of “bullshit”

The last sentence in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale There is no doubt about it reads: ‘It got into the papers, it was printed; and there is no doubt about it, one little feather may easily grow into five hens.’ In September 2015 a process very similar to the rumour-mill in Andersen’s satire swept across the internet. An inaccurate–and on inspection highly implausible–report was picked up and amplified by several British and US news organisations. Thus, an improbable claim about the Japanese government’s decision to effectively abolish the social sciences and humanities quickly became established as a morally reprehensible truth. Once the ‘facts’ of the matter were reported by authoritative English-language media organisations, the outrage spread to other languages, and an online petition was launched to make the government ‘reconsider’ a decision it had not taken. In light of the ‘misunderstandings’ that had circulated in the foreign press, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology eventually felt compelled to issue a statement, in English, to clarify that it had no intention of closing social science and humanities faculties. What transpired in these transactions between Times Higher Education, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, Time, the Guardian, and other news outlets is of more than passing anecdotal interest. Consideration of the case offers insights into the dominant role of the English-using media in constituting Japan and Asia as an object of Western knowledge and of the part played in this by what Harry Frankfurt theorised as the sociolinguistic phenomenon of “bullshit”. The Times Higher Education article and the ones that followed were all examples of the “bullshit” that arguably increasingly proliferates in both journalistic and academic discourse, especially when “circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about” (Frankfurt 2005: 63). It would appear that the kind of “bullshit journalism” represented by the global media storm in question is more likely to be produced when the West reports about ‘the rest’. The paper uses the case of the purported existential threat to the social science and humanities in Japan to discuss wider arguments about the role of ‘bullshit’ in journalistic and academic knowledge production and dissemination about the non-Western world.

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor as framed by Spanish-language and English-language news media

As Latinas assume greater roles in U.S. politics and the judicial branch, are media depictions reflective of these new roles or do negative minority stereotypes persist? This study compared the frames used by The Miami Herald, an English-language newspaper and El Nuevo Herald, its Spanish-language counterpart, during Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and confirmation as the first Hispanic associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. The study explored whether the stronger media identification of the Spanish language newspaper influenced the types of frames used to depict Sotomayor’s rise to the high court. This investigation found that El Nuevo Herald emphasized Sotomayor as a successful woman and pioneer. The Miami Herald highlighted the ideological themes of partisan politics. As a result, the greater cultural identification with the audience may avoid manifest negative stereotypes, but may exclude this audience from political and judicial discourse.

The Foxconn Suicides: Human Vitality and Capitalist Consumption

In 2011, as I was finishing a book on human trafficking, I read about worker suicides taking place in electronic component factories in China. The stories circulating in English-language news media...

Stigma and Counter-Stigma Frames, Cues, and Exemplification: Comparing News Coverage of Depression in the English- and Spanish-Language Media in the U.S.

ABSTRACTA content analysis was conducted to compare news coverage of depression in the English- and Spanish-language media in the United States (N = 355). The study revealed that the English-language media reported stereotypes more frequently than the Spanish-language news media. The presence of all four types of stereotypes (i.e., the mentally ill as violent, suicidal, incompetent, and weak) was associated with the increased use of the stigma frame in the English-language news media, while only the violence stereotype was associated with the increased use of the stigma frame in the Spanish-language news media. The presence of recovery information and positive emotions was associated with the increased use of the counter-stigma frame in both English- and Spanish-language news media. Furthermore, the study found that the use of exemplars was generally correlated with an increase in stereotypical coverage, particularly in English-language news media, but a decrease in educational information in both news media.

Do english-language newspapers make universities prestigious?

AbstractThis study investigated whether English-language news media, which increased coverage of two large, well known private universities in Japan, increased their salience in the minds of international residents in Japan. Based on the agenda-setting theory of media influence, the authors made use of university enrollment trends as an indicator of public salience and found that the English-language media contributed to the growing prestige of the universities among the non-Japanese population. Academic reality in Japan underwent little change during that period with the top ranking government-funded universities, whose coverage in the English-language media did not increase, remained more prestigious within the local context, as is evident from local university rankings. This study also demonstrates that the media can exert an agenda-setting influence on institutions of higher learning, a domain that has not been traditionally investigated. The study also addresses the influences of the international, English-language press in the context of a non-English speaking country, Japan, and how the, “need for orientation” (NFO), might have been a factor.

Sinological-orientalism in Western News Media

From gold farmers and ‘100 million brain-damaged online gamers’ to the world’s biggest game company and more players than US citizens, China seems like the cabinet of curiosities for the whole world of digital gaming. This article focuses on news coverage around Chinese gaming and presents three phases of such journalism. China’s emerging games market was most prominently featured between 1999 and 2005, while 2006-2011 focused on extreme play behavior in China. Most recently, a discourse of vast business opportunities and stabilizing markets has been presented by Western news media. In total more than 853 news articles are explored in parallel to the theoretical concept of Sinological-orientalism. This article suggests significant historical changes in the ways in which knowledge of Chinese gaming has been produced in English language news media.

Cultural Framing of 'Heroes' in Time of Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of Japanese and Western Media, Journalistic Practice, and Audience Response During Japan’s 2011 Nuclear Crisis in Fukushima

This research comparatively examines the media representations of a specific group of people – the workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant during the initial stage of Japan’s nuclear crisis in 2011 – between the English-language news media and their Japanese counterparts. The study explores the cultural portrayals of heroes in news narratives by looking at the salient schemata associated with the projected archetypes of ‘heroes’ and surveys socio-culturally constructed images with distinctively different characterizations. It also investigates the ways news audiences with different socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds have reacted to the hero frames. The study demonstrates how the cultural dispositions of journalists and news audience could influence the news narratives and discusses its implications.

Why do we report suicides and how can we facilitate suicide prevention efforts? Perspectives of Hong Kong media professionals.

The Hong Kong news media report suicide-related events more frequently and sensationally than Western countries. Little is known about Hong Kong media professionals' experiences and thoughts about such reporting. To understand Hong Kong media professionals' experiences and perceptions of suicide reporting and whether the news media can be better engaged into suicide prevention. We conducted three focus groups of journalists from both the Cantonese and English language news media. Data were analyzed using grounded theory methods. We discerned three rationales from participants regarding their intense coverage of suicide-related events: (1) satisfying commercial competitiveness, (2) addressing social problems, and (3) responding to readers' interests. The first rationale was a dominant and vigorous motivating factor, and often influenced suicide reporting among local Cantonese media. Media professionals recommended engagement strategies targeted at frontline journalists, media managers, and general media consumers. We see potential to involve news media professionals in Hong Kong as working partners in suicide prevention. To succeed, this effort requires engagement in a proactive, consistent, and sustained fashion.