| Under the manipulation from the western world led by the US,the origin tracing of Covid19 has been turned into an international controversial issue from a scientific issue.To protect the image and interests of China,the Chinese government stands firm against the politicization of the origin tracing issue.Meanwhile,Chinese media and American media also pay much attention to this issue,and their reports show obvious frame contest.Within the framework of "News Frame Theory",this comparative study uses content analysis,semantic network analysis and rhetorical framing analysis to analyse “Covid-19 origin tracing” related reports from China Daily and The New York Times.After making a content analysis on the related reports,eight generic frames are identified,which includes conflict frame,cooperation frame,responsibility frame,consequence frame,morality frame,science frame,appeal frame and human interest frame.With the help of semantic network analysis,high frequent words in the related reports are matched with the eight generic frames,so that the content of the reports can be further studied.Besides,based on the concept of“boundary work”,the method of rhetorical framing analysis is used to study the issue specific frames of the related reports from three aspects,namely,discursive boundary construction,discursive boundary adjustment and discursive community anchoring.According to this study,both China Daily(“Coronavirus comes from nature”,“China cooperates with origin tracing work”,“Covid19 origin tracing needs cooperation rather than politicization”)and The New York Times(“Coronavirus doesn’t necessarily come from nature”,“China doesn’t cooperate with origin tracing work”,“Covid19 origin tracing should focus on the further investigation of China”)use three frames to construct its discursive boundary.To better understand how the two media adjust their discursive boundary,this study analyses one specific example from each media.China Daily expands its discursive boundary by constructing the frame of “Fort Detrick lab leak theory”,while The New York Times whitewashes the frame of “Wuhan lab leak theory”and construct the frame of “Wuhan lab leak theory 2.0”.To anchoring discursive community,the two media also use different issue specific frames.China Daily mainly uses the frame of “ China gains great pandemic control results” and The New York Time uses “Western society has its institutional strength” to win over the audience.Besides,China Daily uses the frame of“America has long been manipulating international politic” and The New York Time “China has ideological flaws and different culture”to put pressure on the audience.Finally,this study puts forward some strategies for Chinese media to improve their performance in reporting international controversial issues,which includes setting stasis properly,adjust discursive boundary timely,gaining more identification and being cautious about pressure strategy. |
