A Research Into The Orientation Of Foreign Media Reports On Kunming "3.01" Incident

In recent years, China has been paid more and more attention by foreign media. The foreign media reports about China are worth examining, which influences the readers’ opinions towards China. The foreign media reports on “Kunming 3.01” incident are selected as research samples, aiming to reveal the attitudes of foreign media on China’s terrorist attack incident.The analysis of this research consists of three steps under Thompson’s ideology analytic model: the first step is social-historical analysis, which includes the social,historical context and institutional context. The second step is formal analysis, which aims to show the linguistic features by analyzing transitivity, lexical choice and quotations. The third step is interpretation or re-interpretation, which discusses the function of “foregrounding” in the news samples. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to research into the orientation of the foreign media.The findings of this research indicate: the orientation does exist in seemingly unbiased news reports; The foreign media reports on Kunming “3.01” are not neutral,which not only report the incident itself, but connect it with other factors; These reports present a negative Chinese image: the chaos of social security, the intensification of ethnic conflict and tyrannical regime. In sum, there are bias and stereotyped views in these reports. Therefore, readers should develop their critical reading awareness when reading these news reports.