A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of news reporting on China’s air pollution in the official Chinese English-language press

Abstract

This corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of news reports on air pollution published from 2008 through 2015 by China Daily, China’s largest official English-language newspaper, reveals a significant attitudinal shift around the end of 2011 as regards public awareness of increasing air pollution levels in China and related public criticism. It also constructs a clear image of the increasing determination and resolve of the Chinese central government over the course of this 8-year period to take action to effectively reduce air pollution. This study highlights the submissive role played by the official Chinese press in their reporting on air pollution under the strict censorship system of the Communist Party of China (CPC), as well as the socio-political role that international sporting events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games played in raising both public and governmental awareness of environmental issues.

Understanding National Identity Construction in China-ASEAN Business Discourse

“…Historical reference of neighborhood friendship via media discourse is one way to remind the general public of a possible peaceful co-existence with ASEAN countries while shelving differences. Such discursive construction of a positive national image echoes previous findings of governmental regulation on media coverage (e.g., Wang, 2018). It is used to create peace rather than representing the reality of peace.…”

“…Certain social practices and social events may be considered as legitimate and normalized as knowledge while others may not be well represented in media due to their sociopolitical positioning (Caldas-Coulthard, 2003). A growing number of scholars have paid attention to the media framing issues in their studies, including refugee and asylum seeker coverage (Cooper et al, 2017), ideological impact of news bulletin headlines (Hassan, 2018), and air pollution news and national image (Wang, 2018). In light of these studies and the observation that news coverage is seldomly value free ( Van Dijk, 1988), we believe CDA can enrich our understanding of discursive construction of national identity in media coverage.…”

A war or merely friction? Examining news reports on the current Sino-U.S. trade dispute in The New York Times and China Daily

“…The selection of news reports was based on the theory of news framing which states that the coherent construction of an issue in a news report generally involves four elements: problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation/consequences, and treatment/recommendation (Entman, 1993;Gamson, 1992). News reports containing at least two of these elements were considered relevant because all four elements are not always present in a given news report (Wang, 2018). Fourth, data cleaning work was carried out.…”

Media portrayal of hackers inChina DailyandThe New York Times: A corpus-based critical discourse analysis

“…In turn, CDS, which takes into account the social-political and cultural context of data, enables researchers to counteract the limitation of CL on explaining or interpreting the reasons for the occurrence of certain linguistic patterns (Baker et al, 2008). Such integration has been extensively utilized to approach security or risk discourse in the media, especially the discursive practices of certain social groups or security events, such as antiracism (Van Dijk, 2021), refugees and asylum seeks (Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008), terrorism (Qian, 2010), the Iraq conflict (Morley and Bayley, 2009), global financial crisis (Lischinsky, 2011), environmental issues (Wang, 2018), and so forth.…”