Visual images and foreign policy: Picturing China in the American press, 1949-1989

It is assumed wisdom in press and public discourse that visual images can "drive" foreign policy by affecting press attention, public opinion and government decision-making. Evidence for such effects, however, is anecdotal and recent: no longitudinal study of the visualization of evolving relations between America and another country has been attempted. This dissertation examines the complete (i.e., not just a sample) visual (photographic, carbon, graphic, etc.) coverage of mainland China and Taiwan from 1949 through 1989 in Time and Newsweek. Shifts in subject, event, genre, form and theme of imagery are compared to changes in press and government policy.; General findings include: (1) The pictorial coverage of China varied little between the publications, suggesting that common news values, industrial standards, and socio-political influences affected imagery more than idiosyncratic editorial control. (2) Visual images of China reflected American ideological and cultural "views", and thus were not objective depictions of native events and conditions. (3) Evaluative views of China were positive or negative in relation to shifts in American foreign policy. (4) Coverage tended to reinforce the agenda and decisions already formed by government political players such as the President. (5) Coverage tended to focus on dysfunctional social events and mainly to concentrate on the activities of political leaders. (6) Pictures of China were often "recoded" by the captions to stand for ideas, points, or general observations the publications were trying to make. (7) Coverage, however, could bypass and differ from public policy in times of sudden, highly visual news events, such as the Tiananmen events of 1989.; The findings, thus, suggest that visual images in the press can drive the foreign policy agenda (but perhaps not the policy itself) in certain circumstances, but generally are tools or reflections of government decision-making.