A Comparative Study Of Same-sex Marriage Report Of China And British Media On Frame Theory

In recent years, the marriage right of gay people has gained more and more attention of the society, especially after the UK enacted the gay marriage law. As the debate about legalization of same-sex marriage in Western countries has become increasingly intense, same-sex marriage becomes the object of the mass media. The reports of same-sex marriage of The Guardian and the China Daily from the year 2011 to 2015 are chosen as the study objects and are compared to find the differences between their same-sex marriage reports frame.The thesis aims to compare the differences between The Guardian and the China Daily from three aspects of micro frame、medium frame and macro frame based on the frame theory and the discourse analysis. From the aspect of micro frame, the number of the reports, the report pages, report genre, report agenda are compared. From the aspect of medium frame, the narrative frame and manuscript sources are compared. And from the aspect of macro frame, the title, the reporting modes and sources, vocabulary and transitivity and pictures are compared.From the comparison, same-sex marriage is reported into the frame of political and religious conflict by The Guardian, and the gay people are labeled as the powerless group in the face of government by The Guardian. While same-sex marriage is labeled as the object of the gay people by China Daily. The differences could be explained from three aspects that is gender culture, value and news concept.