Study On Confucius Institutes’ News Coverage In The Overseas Chinese Mass Media

As a non-profit educational organization, the Confucius Institute mainly to teach Chinese and helped to spread Chinese culture around the world. It achieved fast growth since it was founded in 2004. Academic research related to the Confucius Institute has also been progressing gradually with the increasing number of Confucius Institute branches. As the research of Confucius Institute shows, Chinese scholars focus on the study of comparatives, research of communication studies, etc. While focus is given to international influence of the Confucius Institute such as the political influence, economic impacts and cultural impacts by overseas scholars. There’s less research of communication studies, even the overseas Chinese media.Chinese media overseas has very special characteristics. On one hand, it is an extension of the Chinese media within China, has a strong connection with China. On the other hand, these oversea media find roots in other countries and they have been growing with inseparable influences from the local communities. Based on these, research on the news coverage of Confucius Institutes in the overseas Chinese mass media has academic significance.Through quantitative content analysis, this paper selects Lianhe Zaobao, Sing Tao Newspapers, Ming Pao(Vancouver), as sources of reporting on the Confucius Institute. The Confucius Institute is evaluated through these news categories: reported quantities, news content, sources, the report form, and the report tendency. It has been found that the reports of the Confucius Institute focus on its cultural activities, rely on a single news source, and report on more formal aspects. At the same time, with different news reports, reporting characteristics differ.Furthermore, through applying the theory of discourse analysis on the Confucius Institute reports, it analyzes on the report strategy and ideology from the news about the Confucius Institute. The features it presents are: observe journalistic professionalism; quoted in favor of our point of view to support the Confucius Institute; political news paradigm is given priority to shape the Confucius institute official, authoritative image; in-depth reporting on the problems of the Confucius Institute to show attention. Finding it has the ideology that halo, solemnize and justify the Confucius Institute. At the same time, the present study gives recommendations on the external communication of the Confucius Institute.