A Study Of Corporate Green Advocacy And Pollution Coverage In China Environment Newspaper (2010-2019)

At present,ecological civilisation has become a national strategy and China has imposed requirements on listed companies at the legal and regulatory level to disclose environmental information and assume environmental responsibility.For companies,public environmental commitments can enhance their credibility,attract relevant stakeholders and improve their corporate image,but some companies are unwilling to pay the corresponding costs to fulfil their commitments.In the media,there have been conflicting reports of green claims and pollution by some companies,and companies have failed to live up to their green claims.However,a single legal approach has not been effective in improving the contradictions between companies’ words and actions.The news media,as the constructors and disseminators of information,play an important role in promoting public awareness and perceptions of companies’ green claims and pollution behaviour,influencing public discourse on corporate behaviour,changing public perceptions of the companies concerned,and increasing the motivation of companies and the public to protect the environment.Based on the perspective of environmental communication,this study combines discourse analysis methods and computer text mining,and takes the green advocacy and pollution coverage of 39 enterprises by China Environment News as the research object and research sample,and conducts an in-depth study on three questions: Firstly,are there different themes in the green advocacy and pollution coverage of enterprises by China Environment News? What kind of corporate images have they constructed?Secondly,what is China Environment’s position and intention regarding corporate behaviour? What solutions are conveyed? What emotions are used in the narrative?Thirdly,what are the perceptions of environmental protection behind China Environment’s green advocacy and pollution reporting?It was found that the government and companies were always a major subject of the coverage in China Environment News,with the negative image of companies diluting the positive image.Three solutions are implied in the coverage,namely "government-led","government-led + voluntary enterprises" and "government +technology",with an overall positive sentiment."Economic and environmental protection go hand in hand" and "environmental protection comes first" have become the mainstream environmental protection concepts at different times.On the whole,China Environment News constructs the government as ’proactive’and ’responsible’;the negative image of enterprises is more prominent,with a ’passive’,’irresponsible’ and other negative images.The negative image of companies is more prominent,presenting the audience with a negative image of being "passive" and "irresponsible".This creates a sense of threat and a lack of motivation to participate in the corporate regulatory process.The media should convey the positive role of government,business,the public and environmental organisations to better engage the public in corporate oversight,and the increased element of ’hope’ and less ’passivity’ of business can have a positive effect on the development of environmental protection in China.In addition,the media should increase storytelling and emotionally charged reporting,and increase the number of issues and subjects to promote the development of environmental protection in China from the media level.