A Study On The Framework And Communication Of The United States Think Tanks On The "Belt And Road" Initiative

Since the "Belt and Road" initiative was launched,it has received widespread attention from the international community.The countries that have joined have gradually increased.It has become an international cooperation platform and a global public product,which has had a profound impact on countries in Asia and the world.Think tanks are institutions that specialize in the production of knowledge and ideas and provide professional decision-making consulting services to governments,society and individuals.American think tanks represented by the Brookings Institution,Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,RAND Corporation,Heritage Foundation,etc.have played an important role in public opinion ecology and political decision-making,and have conducted a lot of studies on the “ Belt and Road ”initiative.Therefore,it is particularly important to understand the American think tank’s attitude towards the initiative and the communication mechanism in the new media environment.In this study,the five most influential think tanks in the United States＿Brookings Institution,Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,Center for Strategic and International Studies,Heritage Foundation,and RAND Corporation were selected as the research objects,including 133 research articles on the “Belt and Road Initiative”since 1949.The study found that there is a large gap in the number of publications of the five think tanks,and the degree of attention is increasing.Most of the middle-length and long-term research articles are mainly in plain text,basically original by experts,and the columns are mostly blogs and project columns.The American think tanks’ research articles on the "Belt and Road" initiative involve five topics: factual content,economic and trade investment,political diplomacy,energy environment,and national security.Among them,the theme of energy and environment is more positive,and the negative theme of factual content is equivalent to neutral attitude.Political diplomacy and national security are more neutral and vague.From 2013 to 2019,U.S.think tanks have always paid more attention to the topics of economic,trade,investment,and political diplomacy.Over time,the national security and energy environment topics have increased their attention.This study finally extracted three frameworks: expansion conflict,economic impact and internal development.The expansion conflict framework refers to highlighting the negative problems and conflicts of the initiative,repeatedly emphasizing the global influence and negative attitude of the initiative;the economicimpact framework regards the initiative as an economic activity and evaluates the economic benefits or losses it brings;The internal development framework refers to the initiative based on China ’s self-development needs and a positive attitude.Under the complex influence of ideology and international relations,American think tanks have not maintained "neutrality." In addition,the article analyzes the new media dissemination mechanism of the "Belt and Road" initiative of American think tanks,and finds that its official website has the characteristics of blogging,highlighting the authority of experts,using social media to carry out matrix communication,and forming a "coupled" communication Model to spread research results to the public and international and domestic media.Finally,this article proposes two strategies for China’s think tank’s "Belt and Road" public opinion guidance.One is to grasp the general direction of Sino-US cooperation and find strategic cooperation points;the other is to make good use of the official website and social media and do a good job in international communication.