Constructing China With Climate Change: Frames And Claim-makers In Representative English Newspapers Coverage Of Climate Change Issue At Home And Abroad

As the effects of climate change on human beings are recognized by more and more people, worldplayers are more engaged in international negotiations and talks touching upon global climate change.The issue of climate change becomes a social problem and hot topic with a variety of forces arguing,clashing and vying for the attention of the world in the social arena the media naturally serves as. It’swidely acknowledged that problem of climate change is not only one in the natural science field, butalso an economic, geo-political and diplomatic problem where most countries’ economic interests anddevelopment potential have a stake.The fact that China became the world’s largest CO2emitter in2007, revealed by the NetherlandsEnvironmental Assessment Agency, had put China under global spotlight for the first time. Under such acomplex landscape, this study aims to explore the differences and similarities of the national andinternational media in covering world climate change mentioning or focusing on China in a six-yearperiod of time. The cross-national comparative research into reports on climate change and china is setto deepen the understanding of news production practices of the national and international climatechange reports and improve China’s reports on climate change while promoting communication inclimate change as well.With a cross-disciplinary and cross-national perspective, this study applies the theories of newsframing and claim-making, focusing on298reports covering the issue of climate change with relation toChina, chosen from forty of the most influential English-language world newspapers. Besides, those ofthe International Herald Tribune, the Age and the Guardian, three ranking the most in numbers ofreports are also chosen from the overall samples, accounting for45percent of all the samples. In orderto make a cross-national comparison with reports released by the international media, climate changereports of China Daily have been taken into observation as well.To put it in a nutshell, the brief conclusions of this study are three folds:First of all, the study reveals that the reports on climate change with relation to China during theperiod of1998to2008have shown a complete issue attention cycle, during which the year of2007isthe turning point of China, for the first time, capturing the attention in the global arena in climatechange and during which the year of2009unprecedentedly sees the peak of the attention of globalmedia.Secondly, according to the study, what foreign media used most frequently is judgments frame,remedies frames, frames of attribution of responsibility and morality frames. As far as the correlation’sconcerned the correlation between problems frames and causes frames, between judgments frames andremedies frames, between frames of attribution of responsibility and morality frames, between framesof attribution of responsibility and conflict frames is significant in the news reports, seen from theresults of the study. What’s more, there’s a tendency for foreign media to employ more conflict framesand frames of economic consequences than home media. The study also shows that most of the functionframes and generic frames are used more frequently in the media abroad than home media.The last not but the least, both media from home and abroad are most likely to quote the politiciansfrom the political interest group as attribution and claims-makers in the reports. Followed by thepoliticians are scientists or research bodies and environmental groups, according to the study.