The Research Of Beiyang Official Newspaper’s Japanese Image In The Russo-Japanese War

In 1902,Beiyang Official Newspaper was launched,which was considered as an official attempt to modernize China’s newspapers and was a pioneering work.This newspaper was founded by Yuan Shikai,and it was very different from the ancient Di Bao and opened new sections on news from various countries,provinces and translations,aiming to appeal to the people to see the world.The first international event that the newspaper encountered was the Russo-Japanese War,a special war that took place in China but in which the Qing government declared neutrality.Current scholarly research on the coverage of the Russo-Japanese War have focused on analyzing the tendencies and attitudes of the press toward the war and revealing the state of society at the time.However,the shortcoming is that most of these studies focus on the private press,but neglect the perspective from the Qing government’s official press.Therefore,this dissertation focuses on the column "Japanese-Russian War Chronicle"published in the Beiyang Official Newspaper,making more than 600 issues of its reports as the original newspaper historical materials,and uses textual analysis to analyse in detail and explore how the Beiyang Official Newspaper reported on the war.What kind of image of Japan was created in its reports?What factors influenced the construction of Japan’s image?The study found that the Beiyang Official Newspaper’s coverage of the the Russo-Japanese War was heavy on translation and light on commentary,and focused on the selection of Japanese sources and related reports in terms of news sources and news facts,creating an image of Japan as a righteous defender of peace in the East and a military power that raised the nation to fight.From the perspective of sociology of journalism,it can be found that there are three main factors that influenced the construction of Japan’s image in the "Beiyang Official Newspaper":Firstly,the essence of the official newspaper was to maintain the government,as the official mouthpiece of the Qing government,its position required it to secure the feudal rule of the Qing dynasty as its fundamental purpose.Secondly,under the trend of social development at that time,the Beiyang Official Newspaper had the social responsibility of "spreading new knowledge" and "inspiring the people".Thirdly,since the newspaper was born under the political demands of the Qing government,it was the inevitable fate of the newspaper to be caught in the political whirlpool,and the complicated Sino-Japanese relations and the politically powerful newspaper director general made it impossible for the newspaper to be left alone.