Framing Peng Liyuan And Michelle Obama:A Content Aualysis Of Mainstream Newspapers' Coverage In China And The U.S.

As Peng Liyuan has become so popular that she started to attract global attention, since Xi Jinping became China's new national leader on 14th March,2013 and later (starting on 22nd March 2013) they visited Russia and African countries, many mainstream newspapers in China and the US often covered her with her U.S. counterpart-Michelle Obama. They used different words, expressed different connotation and portrayed Peng Liyuan and Michelle Obama in different ways. This process is how newspapers "frame" people.Thus, this study aimed at finding out how mainstream newspapers in China and the U.S. frame Peng Liyuan and Michelle Obama, the two most influential first ladies nowadays. This study collected and examined news articles covering two first ladies from People's Daily, China Daily, New York Times and Washington Post. News articles in three periods were chosen, first year in Peng Liyuan's term (2013/03/14-2014/03/14) and first years in Michelle Obama's first and second terms (2009/01/20-2010/01/20 and 2013/01/21-2014/01/21). By employing quantitative content analysis and framing theory, four dominant frames, Gender Stereotypes, Traditional First Lady Role, Qualified/Unqualified, Likable/Unlikable were coded and examined, together with secondary frames under each dominant frames, other topics and overall tone of coverage. This study conducted two-level analysis when examining how People's Daily, China Daily, New York Times and Washington Post framed Peng Liyuan and Michelle Obama. The first level was to compare framing of Peng Liyuan and Michelle Obama by two Chinese newspapers and framing of them by two American newspapers; the second level was to compare how Chinese newspapers and American ones framed Peng Liyuan and how Chinese newspapers and American ones framed Michelle Obama.Results showed that all four newspapers covered Peng Liyuan mostly in Gender Stereotypes and Michelle Obama mostly in Traditional First Lady Role. In addition, Chinese newspapers and American newspapers framed Peng Liyuan differently, especially reflected in the overall tone of coverage, while almost the same when framing Michelle Obama. Chinese newspapers framed Peng Liyuan positively, but American newspapers fixed more attention on her negative aspects. All four newspapers covered Michelle Obama in an all-around way, including both positive and negative aspects. Moreover, actually it is the very first time that New York Times and Washington Post call the wife of Chinese national leader "first lady", which signifies their appreciation of Peng Liyuan, even though there were some negative coverage about Peng Liyuan. As for media study on first lady, there is still no "frames" existing in China.