| Living in a globalized world,a good national image will lead to wider acceptance,deeper trust,and greater cooperation opportunities in international communities.The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is a landmark global sporting event hosted by China against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic,which is also a great opportunity for media to build and spread national image through coverage.This study probed into Australian media’s framing of China’s image through coverage from two representative newspapers.The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald.124 samples were collected from the database Factiva,which are processed by two coders with content analysis and critical discourse analysis.This study aims to find out the agenda setting,framing,and images of China in the Australian media coverage and probe into the affected factors behind,adding bricks to image studies and Australian media studies.The findings are presented from five aspects.First,the trend of the coverage shows that Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics has caught Australian attention for a long time since the bid for the Olympics in 2014.Second,the source of information reveals that Australian media tended to quote from Chinese officials without context and quote from Australian and US officials without solid fact-checks.Third,the attitudes towards the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics are negative-dominated.Fourth,the politics agenda and sports agenda prevail in the Australian media’s coverage.Fifth,the conflict frame and morality frame are dominant in various coverage.Sixth,in Australian media,China’s images are "an aggressive and fearful adversary to democracies","an alarming growing sporting powerhouse","an influential economy with great market opportunity" and "an innovative but dangerous tech power".The reasons behind the framing are elaborated through four factors.First,the realistic factor,national interest that prioritizes security and prosperity is used to explain the polarized image as both "an aggressive and fearful adversary to democracies" and "an influential economy with great market opportunity".Second,the ideological factor,nationalism leads to the narratives of a positive Australian image as "us" but a negative presentation of China as "others",while the cold war mentality brings out the conflict frame dominated coverage.Third,the historical factor,the China fear rooted deep in the formation of Australia and continued to grow with a rising China,resulting in the dangerous and fearful perception towards China.Fourth,the media factor as a profit-driven entity leads them to picture a negative China for sensation and catering to westerners’ stereotypes towards China.Suggestions are given based on the findings and analysis. |
