A Study Of The Media Image Of Asian Americans Under Coronavirus Pandemic

Racist ideology in the West has its deep political,economic,social,cultural and even religious roots.In the United States,despite the law prohibiting racial discrimination,it has not been truly solved,but rather,with the changing political and economic situation and the development of new media technology,new forms and trends of racial discrimination have emerged.In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak,racist remarks viciously connecting the COVID-19 virus with China were rampant in American media and political discourse.Chinese,and indeed Asians,faced racist attacks in daily life in the United States,including cyber-attacks,verbal slurs,discriminatory slogans,denial of services,stigmatization in media reports,and even brutal violence and racial hate crimes.The core of all racist remarks and actions is the attempt to link the Coronavirus and the pandemic with a specific race or country,treating Coronavirus as a "yellow disease" and blaming Asian countries,particularly China,for the spread of the pandemic.The formation of American public perceptions cannot be achieved without the mass media’s promotion and dissemination of related ideas.1The seemingly ideologically oriented news reports in the Western media are rich in racist imagery and racial expressions,which would easily generate negative feelings and prejudices against specific countries and ethnic groups among the Western public.2This article analyzes how the Western media portrayed Asian Americans in the context of the coronavirus pandemic,what kind of reporting framework was used,what kind of Asian Americans’ media image was portrayed,the emotional tendencies and attitudes of the reports,and the implications for us to reflect the racist discourses in such global public health events.In the context of the coronavirus pandemic,racism,nationalism,and xenophobia have become obstacles for countries around the world to join hands to fight against the virus.Asian groups,mainly Chinese,are the main targets of discrimination and xenophobia in Europe and the United State.In terms of research significance,taking Asian-Americans as the object of study and the New York Times as an example,this paper further explores the new forms and changes of racist thinking in the new media environment by analyzing how the American media constructs the media image of Asian-Americans as an ethnic minority.Using content analysis,frame analysis,and textual analysis,this paper analyzes the New York Times’ reporting frames of Asian Americans to clarify the logic of their discourse.Drawing on Van Dijk’s discourse analysis theory and Zang Guoren’s three-level frame theory,this paper analyzes the three levels of reporting frames of the sample reports:high,medium,and low;sets categories including news sections,news tone,news themes,news forms,news genres,and news structures;and analyzes the high-frequency words of headlines and the texts of sample reports,to grasp the deep meaning of the texts.In the process of specifically analyzing the media image of Asian Americans constructed by The New York Times,this paper examines the behavioral patterns and image characteristics(including gender,age,country or region,occupation and the type of referent objects)of Asian Americans in the reports,and summarizes their image patterns into four major aspects:the internally united collective,the pawn of political struggle,the target of racial discrimination,and the increasingly awakened power.By analyzing the framework of the sample stories,we can find that the New York Times did not focus on "Asian Americans"in its coverage of the same period,and Chinese and Chinese communities were the absolute focus of its coverage.In terms of news framing and media image construction,the New York Times maintains a balanced and neutral stance and a calm and restrained language style,and tries to present the whole picture through multifaceted coverage of issues and images.In terms of the media image of Asian Americans,on the one hand,this group’s passive position is prominent,passively coping with the impact of the pandemic and Asian discrimination,but on the other hand,they are increasingly awakening to take action and become a political force that cannot be ignored.The New York Times showed sympathy to the suffering of Asian Americans,acknowledged and reflected on racism,but also tried to defend Americans,inevitably becoming a self-protective discourse for the upper class to alleviate cognitive dissonance.Racism during the coronavirus pandemic has gone beyond mere "race" and has taken on utilitarian motives and aspirations,both in terms of externalizing personal anxieties and fears,and in terms of official political power struggles,contributing to the transformation of a mere public health event into a conflict over ethnic relations and cultural superiority.Rather than be moved by the reflecting and self-criticizing discourse from the elite,ethnic minorities should wake up to the fact that they are the only ones who can fight for their own rights without distractions.Sooner or later,the pandemic will disappear,but racism calls for vaccine more urgently.The coronavirus pandemic reminds us with a painful lesson that human beings are indeed a community of shared destiny,and that no one can be spared from a global disaster.To respond to such global public health events,it is necessary to promote the construction of a community of common health for mankind,establish a universal international responsibility system,and for countries to actively share the corresponding international responsibilities.