Comparative Study of Chinese and American Media Reports on the COVID-19 and Expressions of Social Responsibility: A Critical Discourse Analysis (original) (raw)

The representation of COVID-19 and China in reuters’ and Xinhua’s headlines

SEARCH (Malaysia), 2021

The scare caused by China’s sudden coronavirus outbreak turned out to be a global threat. The new virus cases and infections have been spreading fast both in China and abroad, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global health emergency. By analysing a corpus of 16,980 English headlines of Reuters and Xinhua from January 8, 2020, to February 29, 2020, the present study seeks to examine the most frequently discussed topics in this context. It also investigates how China is represented in the headlines of the two news agencies. Informed by critical discourse analysis, the headlines were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The representation of the virus in the news headlines of the two agencies reflected differences in the thematic focus. Reuters focused on the immediate and long-term repercussions, serious implications, and consequences of the current health crisis. Xinhua’s reporting, on the other hand, tended to play down the effects of the coronavirus ...

The Role of Language during the Pandemic: A Mixed-method Exploration of Discourse of Fear and Sinophobia

Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, 2024

Among the media outlets, the newspapers were an important source of information about the COVID-19 lockdown; however, the language chosen to see the pandemic world cascaded surreal psychological feelings. Fewer scholarly studies are available which have investigated the role of language during the pandemic and its implications. This study explores primarily the pandemic language and its contribution to the discourse of fear and anti-Chinese sentiments. Data was collected from English newspaper articles and university students' responses to the questionnaires. The discursive themes were assessed, evaluated, and described by codifying the qualitative data. These themes were further analyzed and correlated through quantitative data to seek the goodness-of-fit. Findings revealed that the language used to report the infection perpetuated fear, Sinophobia, and certain psychological ripples. The study posits that linguists must come forward and work with journalists to introduce the language to control fear and encourage empathy and pluralism during the crisis.

“This Virus is a Common Threat to All Humans”: Discourse Representation of COVID-19 in Selected Newspaper Editorials

ATHENS JOURNAL OF MASS MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS, 2022

Existing studies on viruses with bias for COVID-19 have mainly been carried out from non-linguistic fields. Linguistics-related studies have not examined the media representation of COVID-19 since it is a recent development. This study, therefore, identifies the representational strategies, discourse structures and discourse strategies deployed by selected newspapers in representing COVID-19 and associated participants. Data were retrieved from selected COVID-19-related editorials from four purposively selected countries and continents across the world: New York Times (USA, North America), The Guardian (UK, Europe), China Daily (China, Asia) and The Punch (Nigeria, Africa), published in the early periods of the pandemic, and precisely from January 1 – March 31, 2020. Guided by aspects of van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of critical discourse analysis on ideological discourse structures, data were quantitatively and qualitatively analysed. The newspaper editorials unusually converged...

Sinophobia in the semiotic representation of Covid-19 in English language newspapers

Research Article by Shahzad Nabi, 2022

This study examines use of semiotic resources, deployed by selected English language newspapers to describe a discourse of Sinophobia in the first wave of Covid-19. It explores how was the discourse of Sinophobia (anti-Chinese sentiments) expressed by highly circulated English language newspapers in the world? The data was based on 10 editorial articles of four English language newspapers: "The New York Times, The Guardian, The Tribune, and The Japan Times". In addition, 30 participants' perceptions about the semiotic choices used by these newspapers were studied to support the findings from selected editorials. Public comments were taken on the notion that they should talk about China and the role of Chinese people in spreading Covid-19. The data was interpreted through thematic analysis by codifying the emerging discursive themes. The findings reveal that semiotic resources deployed by the selected English language newspapers created a discourse of Sinophobia as the data laid great stress on the emergence of virus in the City of Wuhan, China. Moreover, the use of semiotic resources by the English language newspapers is replicated by the participants, as the language of the newspapers and participants on these semiotic resources surface positive self-claim and negative out-group. They divide between them and us, have and have not, eventually widened the language of fear, panic, and hatred.

Media discourse in China and Japan on the COVID-19 pandemic: comparative analysis of the first three months

Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 2022

Purpose-This study aims to analyze how English-language versions of e-newspapers in the first two countries affected, China and Japan, which are non-English-speaking countries and have different socioeconomic and political settings, have highlighted Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic news and informed the global community. Design/methodology/approach-A text-mining approach was used to explore experts' thoughts as published by the two leading English-language newspapers in China and Japan from January to March 2020. This study analyzes the Opinion section, which mainly comprises editorial and the op-ed section. The current study groups all editorial discussions and highlights into ten major aspects, which cover health, economy, politics, culture and others.

The Metaphors of China’s COVID-19 News Commentary and its Social Mobilization Function

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

This study attempts to analyze the types of metaphors and their social functions in Chinese news media's anti-epidemic discourses to show how Chinese official media mobilizes society through discourse strategies. A total of 58 commentary articles on China's anti-epidemic response between January 26, 2020, and April 5, 2020, are selected from People's Daily to analyze the types of metaphors and their social mobilization functions. The research adopts the qualitative analysis method to identify, classify metaphors, and expounds on metaphors' social mobilization function and realization mechanism. Linguistic statistics software AntConc is used to count the total number, frequency and resonance value of all kinds of metaphorical keywords to show the application of all types of metaphors in discourse. The social mobilization function of the metaphors is mainly to enhance people's understanding of the epidemic and the characteristics of the anti-epidemic work, thus promoting the government's anti-epidemic policies and propositions to be widely accepted. The realization of the social functions of metaphor is inseparable from people's complex psychological mechanisms. This mechanism is mainly composed of cognitive, rational, and emotional systems, which jointly promote people's cognition and identification of metaphorical discourse.

Intertextuality and ideology: Social actor’s representation in handling of COVID-19 from China daily

Journalism

As one of the major venues for articulating and disseminating national agendas and opinion discourse, national newspapers play a critical role in promulgating ideology. Underpinned by Intertextuality and Social Actor Theory, this study explores intertextual aspects of China Daily’s reporting of COVID-19 to unearth hidden ideology behind texts. The analysis reveals diversified voices from multiple actors around the globe, with China’s official leaders appearing most frequently. In the portrayal of social actors, some strategies like impersonalisation, and genericisation are utilised to add impersonal authority or power to an actor’s activity, actant’s engagement, and increase the trustworthiness of news. These reprsentational strategies belies a transformation in Chinese media discourse with a softer approach is used in wielding ideological intentions through journalistic practices of intertextuality. Our findings help to unravel how news texts draw on, echo, and bring together multi...

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Covid-19 in Iranian and American Newspapers

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 2021

The policies and ideologies of countries are reflected in the propagated media of that country, and newspapers are no exception. Covid-19 has affected the lives of people all around the world. The present study investigated the ideological differences in reporting the news related to Covid-19 in light of Van Dijk's ideological square framework. To do so, a representative sample of 56 news articles was chosen over a period of one year (from January 2020 to the end of January 2021) from one Iranian and one American newspaper, the Tehran Times and The New York Times. Overall, 2,977 clauses were analysed both qualitatively, to find out the reason of occurrence, and quantitatively, to determine the frequency of occurrence for each microstrategy. Evidentiality, Hyperbole, Metaphor, National Self-Glorification, Negative Lexicalisation, and Number Game were the most frequent micro-strategies. Such high frequencies of the strategies can make for effective discursive apparatus to make readers believe what news articles claim is true. The most salient implication of this study would be raising readers' and academics' awareness of the need to view news articles critically to avoid negative ramifications of ideological propagandas. In the same vein, newspapers need to be cognizant of the micro-strategies they consciously or subconsciously employ since certain micro-strategies can be used to manipulate readers' minds and help news agencies to feed their readers certain ideological and political agendas.

Travelling Media Structures: Adaptation and Demarcation in China's Public SARS Discourse

On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 8 (2019)., 2019

The flow of communication structures across various media formats can be traced back to the printing press culture of early modern Europe, where three distinct media features appeared: disagreement, sensationalism, and self-reference. These features continue to characterize health communication in today's online media (Bogen 2011; 2013). This study investigates whether these media structures also characterize contemporary health communication in non-Western countries like China, which are undergoing a modernization process. By taking European structures of healthcare communication as a point of reference, I will analyze how Chinese healthcare communication differs from its European counterpart. This paper takes SARS (the first globally emerging infectious disease of the 21st century) as a case study. While the SARS discourse illustrates the existence of these communication structures in the Chinese media and indicates some convergence between East and West, it is clear that thes...