Cultural Discursive Construction Of The City Image Of Chinese Cities

Driven by globalization forces and market reforms,Chinese cities have started to incorporate multiple marketing strategies and tactics to increase their visibility in the global arena.Moreover,the international branding of Chinese cities is considered an effective vehicle for enhancing China's national image.However,in this context,relatively few empirical studies have focused on the effect of these international branding practices,especially through the lens of the media's discursive portrayal.This understudied area is worth further examination because the media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion about a foreign city and is a key channel for the city's brand communication.The study seeks to fill this gap by empirically examining the media portrayal of Hangzhou,a megacity in China,in two Chinese(i.e.China Daily and Global Times)and two American(The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal)English-language newspapers over an 11-year period from 2007 to 2017.The objective is to understand how the city image is discursively constructed in English-language media outlets across two countries and the effects of and possible reasons for media representations.The analysis of media representation is conducted within the framework of Cultural Discourse Studies,and corpus linguistic techniques(keyword analysis,concordance,word clustering and semantic tagging)are used to investigate media data.A comparative analysis of Chinese and American news coverage of Hangzhou reveals both similarities and considerable differences in their representations of the city.The newspapers converge in focusing on the city's economy,the local government and the Hangzhou G20 Summit.However,the US newspapers are inclined to dramatize the city's economy and business as crisis ridden,construct a negative image of the local authorities,and portray China's national image negatively.In contrast,the Chinese newspapers tend to depict the city's economy and business as vibrant and booming,to build a positive image of the local government and to present a responsible and dedicated image of China on the global stage.Although certain topics overlap between Chinese and US newspapers,they present different pictures of the city as the foci and tone of media coverage differ widely.Regarding thematic categories,US media coverage of Hangzhou is dominated by issues of economy,business,the housing market and the environment,suggesting a core agenda focused on negativity and crisis.Contrary to its American counterpart,the Chinese media coverage of Hangzhou includes a relatively wide range of topics and presents an inclusive picture of the city.Regarding attitude,although the US newspapers tend to refrain from explicit negative statements,negative representations overwhelm positive ones and this negativity is generally expressed in subtle ways,such as in the use of metaphors,contradiction,framing,agenda setting and quotation patterns.In contrast,Chinese news media tends to use associations that have neutral or positive connotations.Regarding the effect of the news coverage,the distorted representation of Hangzhou in the US newspapers has important ideological implications,portraying a negative image of China.The Chinese media portrayal of the city can be regarded as in line with the city's objectives and serves as an ideal vehicle to brand the city for the international community.Contrasts between the coverage of Hangzhou produced by Chinese and US newspapers illustrate how media discourse in two different cultures and their historical relations can construct the image of a city in different ways.