The Representation Of Environmental Issues In China

This dissertation aims at investigating the representation of environmental issues in the Chinese media, and more particularly in the Chinese English-language newspapers.It explores the way through which the representation of the environmental concern is socially and politically constructed.I will hypothesis is that there is a Chinese specific way to represent such environmental issues in the media. My assumption is that such a unique mode of representation is the result of a specific process that depends on the particular features of the Chinese media landscape, whether those features are social, cultural, political or economic.Hence, I will build my theoretical framework from a social constructivist standpoint.I will explore the representation of environmental issues as a process of reporting object news in a modern context. I will shape my research on Macnaghten and Urry's idea that the status of nature in the media has changed. I will also explore the representation of environmental issues through Ulrich Beck's concept of risk society and risk management. Additionally I will use Chouliaraki's framework on the representation of suffering to provide a clear structure of understanding news representation.Finally,I will present a brief overview of the past and present political and commercial situation of the Chinese media landscape.Using content analysis and discourse analysis I will explore the representation of environmental issues in both China Daily and Shanghai Daily, two foreign language Chinese newspapers.I will focus on two main events:the Copenhagen 2009 environmental conference and the Cancun 2010 environmental conference, both highly political events.I will then present my results and try to analyze them with the help of my theoretical framework. Ultimately, this dissertation should be read as a call for more research in the Chinese media. I encourage the researchers speaking Chinese to go beyond my results and conduct their research within a Chinese-speaking newspapers basis.