How Do Chinese Media Frame Arab Uprisings: A Content Analysis

Abstract

Employing content analysis, this study compares the coverage of the Arab uprisings by the <em>People’s Daily</em> (the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China) and <em>Caixin Net</em> (a typical commercial media) with statements from the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the last decade. It shows that the overall attention given to Arab uprisings in the <em>People’s Daily</em> and <em>Caixin Net</em> declined during the period, but there were shifts in the framing of the conflicts, presentation of issues, and positions. The article demonstrates and analyses how the approach and outline of the conflicts in the <em>People’s Daily</em> changed from disaster to criticism, and then to comparison—its position towards the events generally negative—and how <em>Caixin Net</em> moved from a disaster to a contextual framing of the events, its position tending to be neutral.