Olympics Amid Sino-US Conflict:the Frame Building And Agenda Building Of Boycotting Beijing Olympics From The Lens Of Mediated Public Diplomacy

In December 2021,a spokesperson for the U.S.White House officially boycotted the Beijing Winter Olympics on the basis of fabricated human rights issues such as"China’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.In the context of today’s U.S.-China soft war,China and the United States have used government decrees and media reports to engage in mediated public diplomacy regarding the"diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics," attempting to use the media to construct an international agenda in their favor,promote their own narratives,and compete for the right to swear the "truth" in other countries.Although Pakistan and Japan are allies of China and the United States respectively,their political stance in the Winter Olympics is ambiguous.This study analyzes how China and the United States conducted mediated public diplomacy in the "diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics" and the similarities and differences between China and the United States in mediated public diplomacy through agenda building theory.Based on Entman’s cascading network activation model,this paper analyzes the diplomatic practices of China and the United States in terms of frame building and agenda building.In terms of framework building,this paper analyzes the frameworks of four actors: China,the United States,Pakistan,and Japan,and explores which country’s framework can be dominated by China and the United States respectively to complete the framework building.In terms of agenda building,this paper looks back at the domestic context of China and the United States and tries to investigate whether a country’s government is able to construct an agenda for the country’s media by examining the relevance of issues and attributes.The study finds that China and the U.S.each dominate frames in countries with greater political affinity to their own,and that U.S.-sponsored frames are more influential than those sponsored by China.However,neither the U.S.nor China was able to fully frame the target country,with both Pakistan and Japan including nonallied framing in their coverage,and a much higher percentage of Pakistani news being "frame-balanced" than Japanese.The U.S.and China differ markedly in their mediated public diplomacy strategies in both government messages and coverage,with the U.S.focusing on "human rights and equality" issues and continually using the "solutions" attribute to provide a strategic approach to containing China and boycotting the Beijing Winter Olympics.China emphasizes "Chinese diplomacy," using other countries’ support for China and its own diplomacy to resist U.S.framing;and defines the U.S.boycott as the "politicization of sport" in an attempt to uncover the U.S.’s true objectives.In terms of agenda building,both Chinese and American governments have successfully completed the first level of agenda building and the second level of agenda building,setting the agenda for their own media,in line with the cascading network activation model.However,the Chinese and U.S.governments continue to fail to deliver complete salience on issue and substance attributes;both governments are more successful in agenda building on emotional attributes.