The Images Of U.S.Projected By Chinese Media In The Cold War Era

Researching the process of how Chinese understand and explore U.S. since modern age is of great importance. The historical period, 1949-1988, is very special. In these forty years, international structure and the local situation of China all changed greatly. Chinese images of U.S. changed dramatically, too. What are these changes? Why did these changes happen? This thesis will answer these questions by investigating the images of U.S. projected by Chinese media. This kind of investigating can reflect the condition of how a majority of Chinese people cognized U.S. in the Cold War era and how international environment, Cold War, affected the society development progress of China. Meanwhile, it also arouses the discussion about the social function of Chinese media.Four chapters constitute this thesis.Chapter one introduces related conceptions and theories of national image. First part of this chapter discusses the function and characteristic of national image in international relations and takes Sino-American relations as an example to explain how national image is constructed under the background of Cold War. Second part of this chapter explores the important function of media in the process of national image construction, which emphasizes the important role American media played in propaganda during the Cold War era. This part also treats of the characteristic of Chinese mass communications system and its influence upon the construction of the images of U.S.Chapter two and chapter three are the main part of this thesis. On the basis of original newspapers data, they outline the images of U.S. projected by Chinese media in the Cold War era. The description is divided into two parts. Normalization of Sino-American relations in 1972 forms the division between them. Chapter two describes the images of U.S. projected by Chinese media in 1949-1972. It includes the images of U.S. in the field of Sino-American relations, the images of U.S. in international field, and the images of U.S. in local field these three parts. Chapter three describes the images of U.S. projected by Chinese media in 1972-1988. The structure of it is the same as chapter two. Since the People's Daily is an authoritative and representative newspaper in China, Chapter two and chapter three consider it as original newspapers data. By citing and analyzing the data, these two chapters try to represent the general picture of U.S. that Chinese media framed and try to show somechanges in it visually.Chapter four is about the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis of the images of U.S. projected by Chinese media in the Cold War era. In order to explain how Chinese media framed U.S. clearly, this chapter further analyzes the coverage of U.S. in the People's Daily by making use of content analysis that is an important method in mass communications research field. Based on the statistics and analysis of samples, it draws a conclusion that Chinese media's attitude towards U.S. has changed from completely negative to increasingly objective and comprehensive in the Cold War era. Besides, this chapter expounds the background that caused changes in the images of U.S. It discusses international and local factors that influence Chinese media's framing U.S. The three main factors are Sino-American relations, the society development progress of China and Chinese mass communications system.