Corpus-assisted Media Framing Analysis Of Chinese Corporate Image

Corporate image,a valuable intangible asset,is considered to be a critical factor in the overall evaluation of a corporation.With the acceleration of going global,it is quite urgent for Chinese corporations to establish a positive and sound overseas image so as to consolidate their competitiveness.In recent years,the rapid rise and intensifying expansion of Chinese corporations have drawn increased attention from international media outlets and American mainstream media in particular,which not only plays a dominant role in shaping audiences‘ perception and interpretation of the world,but also conceivably affects the shaping of corporate image of Chinese corporations as well as the implementation of their global strategies.However,the media representation of Chinese corporations is still an under-researched topic.Therefore,the present study intends to provide a comprehensive understanding of the image of Chinese corporations constructed in the American news media.In order to analyze the image of Chinese corporations portrayed in the American media,the author conducts a case study of the Wall Street Journal(WSJ)and examines its framing practice on Chinese corporations from 2015 to 2017.Using corpus linguistic software AntConc,the study carries out an inductive frame analysis of the WSJ‘s coverage of Chinese corporations by combining qualitative and quantitative analytical approaches.The corpus-driven quantitative analysis offers a statistical measuring of elements which particular frame comprises,while the qualitative framing analysis provides systematic interpretations leading to the identification of real frames.Specifically,Pan & Kosicki‘s ?Frame Structure? is adopted in the framing analysis process,which consists of five analytical dimensions: syntactic structures,script structures,thematic structures,rhetorical structures,as well as lexical choices.Ten major frames have been identified in WSJ‘s coverage of Chinese corporations.They are ?Great ambitions of market expansion?,?Mutual benefits?,?Risky bets?,?Operation performance?,?Multiple challenges?,?Business development?,?Complaint about Chinese companies?,?Competition everywhere?,?Foreign government‘s vigilance? and ?Chinese government‘s supervision?.Further,based on these frames,this paper summarizes five dimensions of the image of Chinese corporations portrayed in the WSJ: rapid rise,aggressive ambitions,mutual benefits,various problems and trust crisis.The study incorporates corpus linguistic techniques into qualitative framing analysis,which proves that the corpus approach can offer a systematic connection of ideological features of news content and a reliable identification of frames.It both applies and innovates the method of ?frame structure? while extracting the frames,which is rarely seen in previous research.