A Study Of China's Image In Australian Mainstream Newspaper 2007-2010

“National Image” exerts a deep influence on the communication between governments,organizations or people,as well as on the foreign policies of countries in the world.It could be positive in promoting international understanding and cooperation,or be negative in causing misunderstanding and conflicts among countries,even endangering regional and global peace and stability.With an increasing awareness on the importance of “National Image”,more and more countries are making great efforts to establish or improve their images in the world.Both located in the Asian-Pacific region,China and Australia are geographically close to each other.In general,the two countries have been maintaining friendly bilateral relations since they established formal diplomatic relations in December 1972.All the aforementioned factors have strengthened the mutual need of the two countries and provided conditions for Sino-Australian cooperation.China became the biggest trading partner to Australia in 2009 and remains in place till now.Having a mandarin-speaking Prime Minister,Kevin Rudd,in Australia from 2007 to 2010,fills people with expectations for the further development of Sino-Australian relations.However,after enjoying a stable period,the bilateral relations deteriorated seriously,and even scarcely plunged to the bottom.Hence,it is reasonable and justified to make “The Image of China Under Rudd's First Term” the major topic of this research project.Among the different ways of national image publicity,including movies,internet,and non-government communication,news media has far greater impact.Compared with other methods,news media is more widespread and reliable,especially the print media.Because the reports from print media will be released only after they have been written seriously,revised carefully and edited properly,it is a more authoritative way,than any other news media,in the construction of national image.An Australian nationwide “China's Image” should be studied instead of the regional one.With the specialty of Australian newspaper industry,the two national newspapers The Australian,published by News Corporation,and The Australian Financial Review,published by Fairfax Media,are taken as the research objects.The dissertation establishes and compares “the Image of China” in the two newspapers,and tries to find out the influence from the two group companies.This dissertation employed both “Framing Theory” and “Intertextual Analysis” as research methods.Besides,other methods are applied according to the need of research.Firstly,“Framing Theory” is applied to analyze “the Image of China” described by the two Australian newspapers and the news frame implied in the related reports.The analysis of the news frame is helpful in understanding the construction of “China's Image”.Secondly,according to intertextuality,each text is an absorption and transformation of other texts.Hence,it is an effective method in analyzing the interaction between reports as well as the reports and the readers' opinions.Thirdly,literature analysis,content analysis,case analysis,discourse analysis,and contrastive analysis are possible methods when it is necessary and useful to improve the accuracy of the research,so that feasible suggestions of improving “China's image” could be made.The dissertation has seven chapters in total.Chapter One is the introduction,which includes the background of the project,literature review,research objective and significance,and research methodology.Chapter Two focuses on the general situation of the reports related to China from The Australian and The Australian Financial Review.The third and fourth chapters are case studies of China's image.The third chapter deals with China's image and implied news frame in the reports of politics and security as well as ethnicity and religion,by the study on the cases of the Defence White Paper 2009 and Rebiya Kadeer from The Australian.The fourth chapter is devoted to China's image and implied news frame in the reports of economics and trade,by the study on the Rio Tinto espionage case from The Australian Financial Review.Chapter Five is a comparative study on China's image created by The Australian and The Australian Financial Review in the area of economics and trade.The Rio Tinto espionage case serves as the main research content.Chapter Six is devoted to China's image from the media and the Australian people.It is divided into five sections.The first section gives an analysis on letters to editors from The Australian,while the second section analyzes the same column from The Australian Financial Review.The next section is a comparison based on the first two sections.The fourth part introduces China's image in the Lowy Institute Poll.The last part examines the similarities and differences of China's image between the opinions from the newspapers and the Poll.The last chapter is the conclusion.It sets out to summarize the general features and significance of China's image in Australia,as well as the limitations of this study,and then provides some suggestions for relevant future studies.The major findings and conclusions of this dissertation are as follows: Both China's image and news frame in the Australian media need to be improved.The prejudices against China,in association with insufficient information and misunderstanding,make China's image in Australia be constructed under a biased frame,which exerts tremendous negative influence on the international environment towards China.On the other hand,the opinions from the two newspapers published by News Corporation and Fairfax Media are highly consistent,which reveals the fact that China's image doesn't change because of competition between the newspapers or the companies,even the parties.Thus,instead of counting on a certain party or person,it is much wiser to have communication with the whole nation and society.The fact that China's image from the media coincides with the one from the Poll indicates the importance of media in national publicity.In order to improve China's image,foreign media could play an overwhelming role,which can hardly be played by Chinese media.Finally,though China's image is negative in many aspects,there are,however,some relatively fair and realistic understandings on China,one example being that China Threat Theory does not come to be the mainstream opinion in Australia.In conclusion,Sino-Australian relations have great potentials with uncertainty and problems to be tackled appropriately and effectively.