China’s Domestic Image and Media Use: A Case Study and Empirical Analysis of China’s Post-90s Generation

Abstract

A study of the relationships between the image of a country and media use is one of the most appropriate methods to gain knowledge on various stakeholders’ different perceptions of the country’s sustainability. Through an online survey of China’s post-90s generation, this paper first studies the respondents’ domestic image of China (including social, political, economic, and cultural images), second, their media use behaviors, and third, the relationships between their perceptions of China’s image and their behaviors. Based on the CFA model, with 16 items obtained from the survey data, the results of the empirical analysis indicated that China’s domestic image, as well as its political, economic, and cultural images, were generally neutral for the respondents, while they tended to disagree with the social image. Furthermore, neither traditional media use time nor new media use time of the respondents had any statistically significant influence on their perceptions of China’s image, where the latter was significantly more than the former. However, the type of media contact had a significant influence on their perceptions of political image and on their perception of some items concerning economic and cultural images.

The Discursive Construction of National Image —A Case Study of People’s Daily Online’s Reports on Beijing Winter Olympics

“…At present, lots of research have been conducted from the perspectives of communication, politics, sociology, translation and international relations [3][4][5][6][7] . Most of the foreign studies on the construction of China's image are also carried out by Chinese people [8][9] . Media reports is the communication process of news media on recent events, so they are often regarded as the main means to construct national image, lots of studies have focused on the interpretation of the construction of China's image from different topics [10][11] .…”