A Framework Study Of Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine Coverage By Mainstream Media In The US And The UK Under The Context Of The COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the discovery of the first case of "pneumonia of unknown cause" at the end of 2019,the COVID-19 virus has been with us for three years.Looking back at these three years,the pandemic has become a window through which to observe the world.The impact of the pandemic and its effects on health communication and international communication are self-evident.Along with the pandemic and the constant adjustments of anti-pandemic policies in various countries,the topic of vaccines has consistently received widespread attention on a global scale.China has actively promoted vaccine research and development,and the vaccines have not only been extensively administered domestically but also provided to more than 120 countries.Western media has always paid close attention to the development,testing,approval,and administration of Chinese vaccines and their role in fighting the pandemic,and their news reports reflect the Western discourse’s attitude toward Chinese COVID-19 vaccines.This study aims to explore the Western media’s attitude toward the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine,its reporting methods,and other characteristics,deepen our understanding of the international discourse on China’s image under the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic,and provide a reference for China’s international communication on related issues.This study selected four influential Western mainstream media outlets,namely,the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times from the United States,and the Daily Mail and the Guardian from the United Kingdom,as research subjects.The study analyzed the reports on Chinese COVID-19 vaccines published by these media outlets from January 24,2020,to March 1,2023,as research samples.Under the framework theory,the study adopted content analysis and news discourse schemata analysis,and divided the research timeline into three stages based on the development of the pandemic:January to September 2020,October 2020 to October 2021,and November 2021 to March 2023.From a macro-temporal perspective of news writing,the study analyzed the themes and metadiscourse characteristics of these samples.Then,from a micro-synchronous perspective,the study analyzed the sentence structure and structural patterns of the reports.Finally,the study conducted a comprehensive examination from two dimensions,summarizing the common frames used by these four Western mainstream media outlets in their reports on the vaccine issue,and summarizing their characteristics in constructing the image of Chinese vaccines.This study found that in terms of content,the four media outlets continued to depict China in the way that Western society perceives it.However,due to the scientific validity and effectiveness of the vaccine,the overall tone of reporting on this topic was more relaxed compared to other issues related to China.From the macro-temporal perspective,most of the relevant coverage from the four media outlets was published between October 2020 and June 2021,peaking in December 2020.The five most commonly used angles in reporting were effectiveness,international cooperation on vaccines,vaccination policies,politics and nationalism,and safety.Different angles of news reports were interwoven and distributed at different times,largely consistent with the occurrence and development of vaccine-related events.Headlines and keywords in the articles also changed with the stages of development,from keywords related to research and development,experimentation,and government policies to keywords related to vaccine effectiveness,international cooperation,and virus mutations.From the co-occurrence network analysis of keywords,it can be seen that the four media outlets have conducted in-depth exploration on key issues.Western media outlets tend to use foreign sources,and foreign research institutions,experts,scholars,or well-known figures are the most popular sources for the four media outlets.In terms of emotional tendencies,the proportion of negative reports was the largest,but it has not yet reached half,accounting for 48%.Neutral and positive reports still account for a considerable number in the public opinion field.Within the research period,reports of the three different stances were interwoven,reflecting the exchange and collision of ideologies.From the microsynchronous dimension,in terms of sentence structures,the four media outlets used contrast,passive voice,"time," and vocabulary with distorted meanings to express and shape power relations,influencing readers’ cognition.A significant characteristic of discourse style is"summary views first,supporting views later" and "sub-points first,supporting evidence later." Based on the above research,four common frames used by Western media were identified:effectiveness,transparency,vaccine diplomacy,and safety.The news reports that used these four frames were mostly negative.The average number of words in reports using the transparency and vaccine diplomacy frames was higher than the average level of all samples,indicating that these two types of reports were longer,with more in-depth,extended,and richer content,viewpoints,and backgrounds.