A Qualitive Study Of Overseas Mainstream Media Coverage On The "Chinese Dream"

Under the world theme of “peace and development”, China andmany other countries regard developing the soft power as the nationaldevelopment policy with the acceleration of China’s internationalizationprogress.From the viewpoint of the frame theory，this study tries to make ananalysis on overseas mainstream media’s report on the “Chinese Dream”,and it also use Nvivo10.0to study how overseas mainstream Englishmedia report on China’s national image.Through initial investigation, this study found that the framework ofoverseas mainstream media coverage, particularly those based onideologies and political positions, diverges in terms of genres anddomains. For example, concerning the reports of China Dream, thecoverage of the basic facts and stories is generally objective, but when itcomes to some specific areas such as politics, economy, culture, the framewill exert influence, especially on the political field. The coverage ofspecific events mostly carries a positive or neutral tone. However, thecoverage of national image tends to focus on the negative aspect withsome subjective interpretation. Based on the qualitative data generated by this study, it is found thatthe overseas mainstream media coverage of specific events taking placein China tends to be increasingly objective and fair, focusing more onwhat actually happened, especially in the social-economical field. In thepolitical realm, the long-standing frame deriving from ideologicalsensitivity and Eurocentrism has significant impact on the way thosereports perceive China’s national image. This is the main reason for thedisadvantaged situation in which China’s international communication isinvolved. Since it will take a long time for such a frame to change, eventhough China has improved its communication strategy and resources, arealistic view should be adopted to approach this situation with anunderstanding that a qualitative change to this frame will not happenwithin a short time.In addition, in the short to medium term, China’s communicationstrategy should focus more on the objective facts which are not easilyinterpreted by traditional frame so that such frame-driven coverage can beminimized. The adoption of the “let the facts speak for themselves”strategy will effectively help China incrementally improve itsinternational communication environment.