Analysis Of China’s National Image In Pravda Against The Backdrop Of The COVID-19 Pandemic

At the beginning of 2020,the outbreak of COVID-19 is not only a huge challenge facing the global public health system,but also a huge challenge for China to build international image.China has received great attention from the world in terms of the construction and promotion of its national image.Therefore,timely understanding of the image of China created by foreign media during the epidemic is a prerequisite for meeting this major test.At present,our country has initially established an external communication network covering the world.It has implemented the "one country,one policy" external communication strategy,so that the target countries can see and understand the real and complex China.Since the establishment of the“17+1”Cooperation Mechanism in 2012,China has become more closely connected with Central and Eastern European countries.China has repeatedly emphasized that the“17+1”Cooperation and the Belt and Road Initiative are specific embodiment of multilateralism,which is conducive to promoting win-win cooperation on a global scale.Among EU member states,Slovakia’s import and export trade volume with China ranks fourth.According to preliminary data from the Statistical Office of Slovakia,the trade volume between Slovakia and China in 2020 was 6.91 billion euros,a year-on-year increase of 2.5%.China is Slovakia’s sixth largest trading partner in the world and the largest in Asia,and also the third largest source of imports in the world For China,Slovakia is of strategic importance in CEEs cooperation.However,in stark contrast to the close economic and trade cooperation,China and Slovakia lack close cultural communication and exchanges.In particular,the outbreak of the COVID-19 and the manipulation of the Western media have caused the Slovak people to have a lot of misunderstandings about China,which is bound to affect the depth and breadth of cooperation between the two countries in the long run.Therefore,it is necessary to know China’s national image in the Slovak media during the COVID-19 epidemic.The object of this study is the web version of the Slovak newspaper Pravda.Pravda is the most influential mainstream newspaper in Slovakia,with a long history and a wide audience in Slovakia.Pravda was founded in 1920 and has published many reports on China,which is one of the main ways for the Slovak people to understand China.Although social media is playing an increasingly important role in information dissemination in the Internet era,it is undeniable that traditional mainstream media is still the main part of news production.In particular,international news is the main source of information for people to form an overall impression of another country.Therefore,studying China’s image in Pravda is of practical significance for our country to improve the "one country,one policy" strategy and eliminate misunderstandings under the COVID-19.Specifically,this thesis aims to seek answers to the following questions:(1)What is the overall image of China in the Slovak media,compared with that in the media of the UK and US?What are the positive and negative characteristics of China’s national image?Why is such an image?(2)What are the topics that the Slovakian media pay most attention to when reporting on China?(3)How to turn the national image crisis in the context of the COVID-19 into an opportunity to build a good image?Taking the country’s image as the starting point,this thesis conducts quantitative and qualitative study on the China-related reports of Pravda from January 2020 to February 2021(since the COVID-19 outbreak),and answer the three questions raised at the beginning of the thesis.Generally speaking,firstly,during the COVID-19 epidemic,Pravda created an image of China with both positive and negative characteristics.However,due to the lack of cultural and other images,China’s present image is one-sided,unbalanced,and incomplete,and cannot reflect a true,complete picture of China from an objective perspective.Political stances,reporting sources,cross-cultural language barriers,stereotypes and newspaper’s commercial operation all affect the construction of China’s image.Secondly,the Slovak media pay more attention to political and economic situation when reporting on China,which is also related to the reality of close economic cooperation.Finally,this thesis explores some of the current problems in our country’s external communication that China-related reports in Pravda reflect,and puts forward suggestions on how to implement the "one country,one policy" strategy and how to accurately promote China’s image to Slovakia.The most important contribution of this thesis is that it is a paper dedicated to analyzing the image of China in the Slovak media under the COVID-19.It can provide the latest data and first-hand information for China to study the image of China in the Slovak media.