Western News Media Research Articles

Features of Assessing the Image of the PRC Abroad on the Example of News Coverage of COVID-19

The article examines the foreign policy image of the People’s Republic of China in the reflection of foreign news media in covering a negative topic closely related to China — the COVID-19 pandemic, and analyses the possibility of forming a positive image by conducting foreign policy.Aim. To assess the foreign policy image of the People’s Republic of China based on content analysis of online news media and determine whether there is an opportunity to improve it in the international arena when considering the initially negative situation.Methods. To determine the specifics of coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in the English-language media, a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of The Guardian and The Washington Post corpuses, totalling 172 articles, was conducted according to a set of parameters developed by the authors, including the possibility of sample formation, lexical analysis of headlines, tonality analysis and frame analysis.Results. Within the 6 criteria analysis, the following results were obtained: the degree of intensity of coverage was rated as high, headline analysis showed a decrease in negative connotations in the second macro-period, the positive tone of the corpora increased by 10–20% by 2021, the qualitative analysis of the tone of the text showed the importance of international cooperation when describing the topic related to China, where one of the key words is “support”, and also confirms the existence of theories about the leakage of the virus and its artificial origin in the West and the United States.Conclusion. The study concluded that negative assessments of the image of the People’s Republic of China prevail in the Western news media, which is due to the coverage of an initially negative topic, as well as the coverage of a state with an ideology different from the West, the creation of sensational material by criticizing another state, and the dissemination of conspiracy theories about the creation of a coronavirus in laboratory conditions. At the same time, the possibility of the state to improve its own image in the foreign news media by implementing a well-considered friendly foreign policy was established.

A war foretold: How Western mainstream news media omitted NATO eastward expansion as a contributing factor to Russia’s 2022 invasion of the Ukraine

This article assesses how Western mainstream news media framed causal factors of Russia’s 2022 invasion of the Ukraine. The article is based on a synthesis and integration of scholarly studies as well as a primary data analysis of Western mainstream newspaper reporting. The research firstly conducts an integrative literature review investigating how Western mainstream news media have reported on Russia and the new Cold War more broadly. Using this as a backdrop, a quantitative and qualitative content study investigates how causes of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine were framed in the US, the UK and the German press. To contextualize news media framing, the second section critically assesses the Western diplomatic and historical record of NATO expansion. The article identifies two competing explanatory frameworks: the dominant Western news media narrative assumes that Russia/Putin’s imperial ambitions and nefarious traits have caused the war, and a second narrative, advanced by several scholars, former diplomats and selected journalists, asserts that NATO’s eastward expansion created the context for Russia’s invasion. The article concludes that the second narrative has been de-emphasized in the news. Such framing is contrary to the historical and documentary record, and links to a marginalization of non-military solutions to solve the conflict.

Discursive Strategies of China-Related News in Chinese and Western Social Media

With the development of social media, the landscape of international news dissemination has changed significantly. This research is conducted to discover the discursive strategies of Chinese and Western news outlets in China-related news reports on Twitter, one of the most widely used social media platforms. The key objective is to examine China-related news reports on Twitter to explore the different discursive strategies employed by Chinese and Western news media in reporting China. To achieve these objectives, the research data were collected from the Twitter accounts of People’s Daily China, an official news outlet representing the Chinese media, and the New York Times, a leading American/Western news agency. Based on the data analysis, certain discursive strategies were identified in the practices of Chinese and Western media that are causing differences in constructing China’s international image. These results might assist the international audience in gaining a more objective understanding of China and help Chinese news media sources improve their reporting strategies and international communication capacity.

Constructive Journalism: Techniques for Improving the Practice of Objectivity

ABSTRACT Objectivity plays a central role in Western news media, being considered the cornerstone of professionalism and quality. However, as traditionally and passively practiced, critiques of objectivity include journalists overlooking inherent subjectivities in newsgathering, the impacts of journalists’ ideology on news representation, replication of existing power structures, and portrayals of false balance. These critiques have led to increasing scholarly and professional interest in alternative forms of journalism, including constructive journalism – an approach intended to improve the quality and usefulness of news content. We position constructive journalism as a series of techniques: solutions, future orientation, inclusiveness and diversity, empowerment, context, and co-creation, and consider the relationship of each to an active form of objectivity, clarifying the contested relation of constructive journalism to objective reporting. Further, we describe how constructive techniques help journalists ethically and transparently navigate subjectivity in news reporting, with an aim toward improving the accuracy and quality of news.

Palestinian female ‘suicide bombers’ and the masculinity of martyrdom: Comparing ‘scandalous subwomen’ reactions in British and American broadcast news media coverage of the Second Intifada

From grassroots activism to armed combatants, Palestinian females have been active in combating Israel’s occupation of Palestine since the early twentieth century. During the second Palestinian Intifada, however, western news media coverage of female-perpetrated ‘suicide bombings’ sensationalized these previously unseen acts. Utilizing Herjeet Marway’s ‘scandalous subwomen’ societal reaction as a framework, this article engages in a multimodal analysis of the largely unexplored UK and US broadcast news coverage of female-perpetrated Palestinian ‘suicide bombings’. Via a postcolonial perspective, it addresses this framework’s focus upon ‘exclusion’: the projection that Palestinian female suicide bombers’ political participation is subject to male influence. This article finds that exclusionary male figures, as well as Saudi Arabia, are framed by UK and US broadcast news media to afford Palestinian female suicide bombers a lack of political agency. Palestinian female ‘suicide bombers’, as a result, become victimized figures via the UK and US broadcast news media’s orientalist ‘perceived reality’ which fails to recognize these female actors’ agential will or their ability to freely participate in political acts.

Gothic visibilities and International Relations: Uncanny icons, critical comics, and the politics of abjection in Aleppo

AbstractThe war in Syria has been communicated to global audiences through images of dead and injured children, decapitated and tortured bodies, and ruined cities. The article shows how news media coverage of the war's impact on the city of Aleppo invoked a Gothic tradition. Drawing on Kristeva and Freud's concepts of the abject and the uncanny, the article argues that the Gothic tradition can further International Relations research on the constitution of Selves and Others. The Gothic Other is constituted through the (Gothic) Self's repulsion, fascination, and desire, and the Gothic tradition revolves around an understanding of the invisible as an in-between space of fear and anticipation. The ability to recognise Gothic themes in an image depends on one's familiarity with the Gothic tradition, hence images are theorised as having a Gothic potentiality. The article focuses on how the Anglo-Saxon Gothic tradition enabled Western readers to identify Gothic themes in news coverage of the war in Aleppo. The article adopts a multimethod strategy including a content analysis of 457 images published by Western news media; a discourse analysis of news stories; an analysis of three Gothic, uncanny iconic motifs; and an author-created comic drawing on Gothic elements from the published photographs.

Maharishi Ayurveda and historical newspaper articles: A statistical analysis of latent factors

For more than a hundred years, Western news media intermittently reported on the unique properties and practices of Ayurveda, the science of health and long life from ancient India. However, in the last 40 years there has been a significant explosion of reporting on Ayurveda, and this has been in large part due to the efforts of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Beginning in the late 1970s, Maharishi, along with eminent Ayurvedic physicians Dr Brihaspati Dev Triguna, Dr V. M. Dwivedi, and Dr Balraj Maharishi, began a program to restore the full dignity of Ayurveda by revitalising its foundations in Veda and the Vedic Literature and expanding its range to include the fundamental role of consciousness in health on the one hand and its application to collective health and the environment on the other. This program of revitalisation, called Maharishi Ayurveda, has been reported in newspapers but the contents of these historical articles have never been documented. The present study statistically analyses the dates, locations and sources of quotations in newspaper articles, identifies 29 key topics, and uses exploratory factor analysis to uncover four unobservable themes embedded within them. The outcome of these analyses is a comprehensive exploration of the historical public record of Maharishi Ayurveda between 1982 and 2013.

Media Representation of Islam and Muslims as a Security Threat

This study aims to provide a summary of the research on the security dimension of Islamophobia and the recent portrayal of Islam and Muslims in the Western media as a security threats. The study attempts to present a review of the findings as well as the theoretical and methodological frameworks used in various studies to analyze the representations of Islam and Muslims as a security threat that are being produced by western news media. Drawing on various approaches, research shows that discussions and discourses about Islam and Muslims are frequently produced using a variety methodology. The research has confirmed that there is a "security threat" rhetoric that promotes and contributing towards the securitization of Islam and Muslims. The findings also showed that Western news media contained securitized images of Islam and Muslims.

Mainstream Media’s Obsession with Africa

Mainstream Media’s Obsession with Africa

“Everyone Had to be Part of This:” Social Media and Uprising Participation Decisions

Ten years after the Arab Spring there remains much that we do not understand about the role of social media in uprisings. An enthusiastic western news media was quick to label the 2009 Iranian uprising ‘The Twitter Revolution’ despite the marginal level of Twitter penetration in Iran at the time. The same news media in 2021 immediately attributed the US Capitol uprising to the proliferation of disinformation on social media, despite many additional complicated social factors. While scholars of different fields have attempted to explain the role of social media in uprisings since 2011, there is little more we understand about the role of social media in the January 2021 US Capitol uprising than the 2009 Green uprising in Iran. The objective of this project is to develop a framework for better understanding the relationship between social media and citizen decisions to participate in uprisings that persists through the many different examples we have seen since 2009. This study contributes to the literature by providing a game theoretic structure based on the strategic interdependence of individual behavior to better understand uprising activity in oppressive states and democracies. We explore the role of social media in uprisings by considering uprisings as a multi-player game, using Schelling’s (1978) critical mass game to model uprisings and consider the potential impact of social media on behavior. We then apply this model to the February 2011 revolution in Egypt and the 2009 Green Movement protests in Iran, testing it with data from in-depth interviews on participation decisions. If we understand uprisings as such a critical mass game, then we see that social media impacts behavior (and thus outcomes) if it can change either individuals’ underlying feelings and participation thresholds (i.e. the shape of the population’s participation curve), or their perception of the number of others who will join the uprising (i.e. the population’s position along the curve). We analyze data from interviews with Egyptians and Iranians about their decisions to join the protests or not to test the applicability of the critical mass model and to better understand the specific effects of social media use. We find in many ways individuals do make their participation decisions largely consistent with the critical mass model. The support for the role of social media in these decisions is less strong, but suggests it can impact participation by providing information regarding participation levels, assessing the benefits and costs of participating, and triggering emotions, sometimes changing opinions of the government.

Misinformation and the US Ebola communication crisis: analyzing the veracity and content of social media messages related to a fear-inducing infectious disease outbreak

BackgroundThe Ebola communication crisis of 2014 generated widespread fear and attention among Western news media, social media users, and members of the United States (US) public. Health communicators need more information on misinformation and the social media environment during a fear-inducing disease outbreak to improve communication practices. The purpose of this study was to describe the content of Ebola-related tweets with a specific focus on misinformation, political content, health related content, risk framing, and rumors.MethodsWe examined tweets from a random 1% sample of all tweets published September 30th - October 30th, 2014, filtered for English-language tweets mentioning “Ebola” in the content or hashtag, that had at least 1 retweet (N = 72,775 tweets). A randomly selected subset of 3639 (5%) tweets were evaluated for inclusion. We analyzed the 3113 tweets that meet inclusion criteria using public health trained human coders to assess tweet characteristics (joke, opinion, discord), veracity (true, false, partially false), political context, risk frame, health context, Ebola specific messages, and rumors. We assessed the proportion of tweets with specific content using descriptive statistics and chi-squared tests.ResultsOf non-joke tweets, 10% of Ebola-related tweets contained false or partially false information. Twenty-five percent were related to politics, 28% contained content that provoked reader response or promoted discord, 42% contained risk elevating messages and 72% were related to health. The most frequent rumor mentioned focused on government conspiracy. When comparing tweets with true information to tweets with misinformation, a greater percentage of tweets with misinformation were political in nature (36% vs 15%) and contained discord-inducing statements (45% vs 10%). Discord-inducing statements and political messages were both significantly more common in tweets containing misinformation compared with those without(p < 0.001).ConclusionsResults highlight the importance of anticipating politicization of disease outbreaks, and the need for policy makers and social media companies to build partnerships and develop response frameworks in advance of an event. While each public health event is different, our findings provide insight into the possible social media environment during a future epidemic and could help optimize potential public health communication strategies.

How images frame China's role in African development

Abstract Political leaders, policy-makers and academics routinely refer to development as an objective process of social change through the use of technical, value-free terms. Images of poverty and inequality are regularly presented as evidence of a world that exists ‘out there’ where development unfolds. This way of seeing reflects the value of scientific forms of knowledge but also sits in tension with the normative foundations of development that take European modernization and industrialization as the benchmark for comparison. The role images play in this process is often overlooked. This article argues that a dominant mode of visuality based on a Cartesian separation between subject and object, underpinning the ascendance of European hegemony and colonialism, aligns with the core premises of orthodox development discourse. An example of how visual representations of development matter is presented through images of Africa–China relations in western media sources. Using widely circulated images depicting China's impact on African development in western news media sources as an example of why visual politics matters for policy-making, the article examines how images play a role in legitimizing development planning by rendering associated forms of epistemological and structural violence ‘invisible to the viewer’.

The Demopath’s Lexicon: a guide to Western journalism between the river and the sea

ABSTRACTThis article examines a double discourse by the Palestinian leadership, one in English and one in Arabic, which plays a central role in their negotiating strategy with Israel since the onset of the Oslo ‘peace process’ (1993). Using language very close to Western terminology, Palestinians in English speak of ‘Occupation’ and ‘Settlements’ with the 1967 borders as the defining issue; while in Arabic, they speak of ‘Occupation’ and ‘Settlements’ in terms of the 1948 borders (i.e., all of Israel is an ‘Occupation’ and Tel Aviv is an illegal ‘settlement’). As a zero-sum negotiating strategy this makes perfect sense: convince Israel to concede ‘land for peace’ (1967 borders), when in reality this means ‘land for war’ (1967 borders as launching pad for war to 1948 borders). The western news media, allegedly committed to accurate reporting, shows no knowledge of the Arabic discourse and presents what Palestinians say in English as reliable reflections of their actions and intentions. As a result of this failure to identify the double-discourse, the Western legacy media presents Palestinian war propaganda as news to their Western audiences, unwittingly helping the Palestinians in their deception.

Covering Women’s Rights, Silencing Suppression

Covering Women’s Rights, Silencing Suppression

Offline: Young people—from listening to leadership

The hypocrisy of global health can be suffocating. Writing in their 2016 Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, George Patton and colleagues argued for the “establishment of forums for meaningful youth participation”. Such forums should strengthen “mechanisms for the meaningful participation of adolescents in the design, communication, and implementation and monitoring of policies and practices that affect their health and wellbeing. This is particularly important for socially and economically marginalised adolescents”. Such enhanced engagement could be a powerful force for social change and would require “financial investment, strong partnerships with adults, training and mentorship, and the creation of structures and processes that allow adolescent and young adult involvement in decision making”. Although the Commission's recommendation was widely endorsed, and although young people are increasingly given platforms to express their views (witness the inspirational voice of Greta Thunberg in leading action to address the growing climate crisis), the difficult truth is that young people are rarely invited to contribute to shaping the future of their societies. They are rarely invited to shape the future of global health, despite the platitudes of global health leaders. But there is one example of serious engagement with young people that should stimulate greater attention to the ideas and opinions of new generations. The annual Arab Youth Survey is a spectacular exercise in youth participation. The results of the 11th survey were published last month and revealed a dramatically different vision for the Arab world than is typically displayed in western news media. Young people in the Arab world are the overwhelmingly dominant demographic—two-thirds of the Arab population is under 30 years of age. 3300 Arab men and women (the sample was split 50:50) aged 18–24 years were interviewed across 15 countries and territories, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Yemen, and the occupied Palestinian territory. The findings represent the views of 200 million Arab youth. Contrary to western stereotypes, young Arabs report that religion plays far too large a part in Middle East affairs. They want religious institutions to be reformed. Three-quarters of Arab youth describe the quality of education in their country as unacceptable. More than half want to leave to pursue higher education in the west. Young people in Arab countries want an end to regional conflicts. A majority describe drugs as easily accessible, with drug use on the rise. Mental health is a top health priority for Arab youth, and they argue that access to high-quality mental health care is poor. The health priorities in the Arab world are not surprising, given political tensions across the region. 31% of Arab young people know someone suffering from a mental health condition. And 50% say that mental health problems are stigmatised. Around 90% of young Arabs believe governments have a responsibility to provide health care to all citizens. And for young Arabs social media is seen as more trustworthy than traditional media. The biggest obstacles facing Arab countries are the rising costs of living, unemployment, lack of Arab unity, slow economic growth, the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, civil war in Syria, the threat of terrorism, lack of democracy, loss of traditional values, and lack of political leadership. In an overview of these findings, Afshin Molavi concludes that the survey reveals “the pragmatic desires of Arab youth for jobs, security, better education, and more government accountability, while rejecting terrorism, extremism, and corruption”. But who is listening? Not Arab political leaders. Young people must be given not only voice but also power to shape their futures. This power is their fundamental right. Despite advocacy for greater youth engagement, much of what passes for participation is still little more than tokenism and lip service. Power is rarely given to young people. Yet, as George Patton and colleagues showed, “adolescents are emotionally primed to engage”. The denial of engagement will increase the risk of later life mental ill health or, worse, violent extremism, even terrorism. Young people in every nation are entitled to express their views and visions for their futures. It is then up to political leaders to create the means to channel those ideas into a political process for action. The fact that they do not is a monumental betrayal of their people.

Satires, narratives and journalistic divides: Discourses on free speech in Western and Islamic news media

This study investigates how Western news media (The New York Times and BBC News) and Islamic news media (Al-Jazeera English and Al-Arabiya English) frame issues about freedom of expression and anti-Islamic sentiments, respectively, in the aftermath of the January 7, 2015, attacks on France’s weekly satirical newsmagazine, Charlie Hebdo. Results show a deep divide: that the Western news media, on the one hand, endorsed Charlie Hebdo’s right to offend religious sensitivities and lauded its role to protect the Western value of free speech; and that the Islamic news media, on the other, viewed the entire Western discourses as anti-Islam and anti-Muslim, emphasizing the need for good taste and professionalism in journalism.

‘Picturing Afghan Women’ for Western audiences: The Afghan perspective

As the United States engages with the Taliban in a peace process that might return them to influence within Afghanistan, concerns are rising regarding the future status of Afghan women. In this background, this article returns to the much studied subject of the portrayal of Afghan women in Western news media through Orientalist stereotypes. Noting the lack of Afghan perspectives in previous research on this topic, the study investigates the views and practices of Afghan photojournalists, who have today come to replace international photojournalists in the country, when it comes to ‘picturing Afghan women’ for Western audiences. It sheds light on the day-to-day professional activities of these photojournalists when producing images of Afghan women for Western audiences. It goes on to explore Afghan photojournalists’ perceptions about how Afghan women have been and are being portrayed in Western news media. Finally, it reports on how most of these Afghan photojournalists may perpetuate the same stereotypes about Afghan women for Western audiences because hierarchies in the international ‘visual gatekeeping chain’ supersede the Afghan photojournalists’ power to shape visual narratives and coupled with the need to earn an income as precarious labor, their individual self-reflexivity regarding picturing Afghan women are suppressed. The study also notes how photographing Afghan women causes risks for Afghan photojournalists as well as the Afghan women who are photographed. Attention is called to this hitherto invisible ethical concern that lives are jeopardized to validate Western savior narratives regarding Afghan women through images.

Manufacturing Consent in Venezuela: Media Misreporting of a Country, 1998–2014

This article assesses Western news media coverage of Venezuela between 1998 and 2014. It found that the major newspapers in the UK and US reproduce the ideology of Western governments, ignoring strong empirical evidence challenging those positions. The press portrayed Venezuela in an overwhelmingly negative light, presenting highly contested minority opinions as facts while barely mentioning competing arguments, as Herman and Chomsky’s (2002) propaganda model would predict. After conducting interviews, it is clear that a small cadre of pre-selected journalists is immersed into a highly antagonistic newsroom culture that sees itself as the “resistance” to the Venezuelan government and its purpose to defeat it. As a result, hegemony of thought reigns and some journalists report self-censorship.

The map is the story: the U-shaped line in western news media coverage of the geopolitics of the South China Sea

ABSTRACT China’s claim to a large part of the South China Sea (SCS) is indicated by a specific cartographic convention, the U-shaped (or dashed) line, shown on its official maps. The line has become an important element in Western popular discourse concerning the geopolitics of the SCS. This paper argues that the cartographic re-presentation of the U-shaped line in the Western press contributes to an ‘orientalist’ conception that portrays China as ‘other’; as aggressive and unwilling to ‘play by the rules’, and a portrayal of the whole region as potentially unstable. Its re-circulation may, however, work to China’s advantage by reinforcing cartographic precedent and creating a specific ‘geographic imagination’ of the SCS. Maps are regarded as an important element in the ‘spectacle of fear’ propagated by the West, with the representations of the SCS shown to be part of a wider use of maps by the press to cover issues related to geopolitics and conflict.

Constructing a Data‐Driven Society: China's Social Credit System as a State Surveillance Infrastructure

Big data technologies have been adopted by both the public and private sectors to develop and expand surveillance capacities. This article traces the institutional processes and political‐economic interests of the public and private stakeholders involved in the construction of China's Social Credit System (SCS), which is currently on track for full deployment on 1.4 billion citizens by 2020. The SCS aims to centralize data platforms into a big data–enabled surveillance infrastructure to manage, monitor, and predict the trustworthiness of citizens, firms, organizations, and governments in China. A punishment/reward system based on credit scores will determine whether citizens and organizations are able to access things like education, markets, and tax deductions. While the SCS is widely described by the Western news media as a means of “big brother” or political control, we find that it is a complicated system that focuses primarily on financial and commercial activities rather than political ones. This article presents a framework for understanding state surveillance infrastructures by exploring how various government agencies are cooperating to establish this centralized data infrastructure with the aim of scoring credit, and discussing the distinct but interconnected processes of data collection, data aggregation, and data analytics.