A Textual Analysis On "Green Development" Reported By China Daily On Facebook From 2018 To 2022

Environmental problems such as climate change,a sharp decline in biodiversity,and plastic pollution are occurring frequently in worldwide.Meanwhile,PPE pollution become a new concern after the pandemic.Global environmental governance has increasingly become a world-concerned issue.The term "ecological civilization construction" is incorporated into the "five in one" master plan at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.In 2018,with "green development" as the basic core,Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization is formed,promoting the overall development of the "nature-society-economy".Faced with China’s rising,western countries made up "China’s environmental threat theory" to demonize China’s green development path and suppress China’s voice on the international stage.As China’s mainstream media,China Daily is the main channel for telling stories about China’s participation in global environmental governance.Taking China Daily’s environmental reports on Facebook as the research content,the study selects 472 environmental reports from 2018 to 2022 according to President Xi’s five-point initiative on green development.Firstly,by using the content analysis method,the research explores the general characteristics of its "green development"reports.Secondly,taking Van Dijk’s news discourse analysis theory and Liu Tao’s views on visual rhetoric as the theoretical basis,the article examines the construction of "green development" issue through text analysis,summarizes the status quo of environment reports,and makes optimization suggestions for it.The study argues that China Daily’s environmental news has an unbalanced structure of reporting objects,and non-governmental groups are absent in most cases;the proportion of positive reports is extremely high;the narratives perspective is very macro,and correspondently,the microscopic description is lacking;the reports frequently adopt a "hard" narrative style,and stories lose their appeal.Finally,the article provides suggestions from three aspects consisting of report objects,narrative technique,and visual rhetoric.From the perspective of report objects,"public diplomacy" should be exerted,integrating various voices from the general public,NGOs,and enterprises other than the government,promoting the education of green culture,advocating the ecological wisdom of farmers,and highlighting the"publicity" of the concept of "green development".From the perspective of narrative skills,the research suggests increasing personalized and emotional stories,integrating multiple narrative methods,expanding the forms of participation,and promoting stylish content and activities,which could enhance the readability of news.At the level of image rhetoric,journalists and editors are advised to make comprehensive use of various types of pictures such as natural scenery,political cartoons,and news photos,to adopt a variety of image rhetorical strategies(i.e.including comparison,exaggeration,and symbolism,etc.)to arouse the audience’s emotional response.Besides,in order to enhance the international dissemination ability of China Daily’s environmental news,it’s necessary to endow photos with glamorous cultural imagery and highlight the shared values of mankind through visual pictures.