Personalization of Trump and Xi in the U.S.–China trade conflict news: Comparison between the U.S. and China

Abstract

News personalization in one-party dominant countries has been understudied or often analyzed through a Western lens. This study unpacked this phenomenon in one-party dominant country with the theory of leadership cult and soft power and compared news personalization of Xi Jinping in China with that of Donald Trump in the U.S. against the backdrop of the U.S.–China trade conflict. This study also investigated the influence of press ideology, political–geographical scope of news coverage and the trade conflict period on the presence and valence of personalization within each country. Results showed that leadership personalization was less prominent in China than in the U.S. The manifestation of news personalization in the U.S. was affected more by press ideology, while contextual factors, such as news political scope and the conflict period, played bigger roles in China. These findings provide insights into how news personalization is displayed in divergent political and media systems.

Building network agenda in China-U.S. trade conflict news: Transnational comparative study across China, the United States, Singapore and Ireland

“…In contrast, in the other three countries, journalists tended to prioritize professional ideals and practices. Thus, they are more inclined to address the elements of news value, such as conflict and power elite (Liu, 2023; McIntyre, 2016) when covering the economic friction between China and the U.S. Future studies could delve deeper into examining differences across countries in terms of how they construct the politicized aspects of news events in greater detail.…”