Sustainability Trade-Offs in Media Coverage of Poverty Alleviation: A Content-Based Spatiotemporal Analysis in China’s Provinces

Abstract

Poverty alleviation has always been fundamental for China to achieve the goal of creating a moderately prosperous society. This study conducted a content-based spatiotemporal analysis of media coverage, regression analysis of panel data, and text mining to examine how China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) Strategy is characterised by online mainstream media platform. A total of 10,857 articles related to TPA in 31 specific provinces of mainland China were collected and analysed by Natural Language Processing (NLP) analysis. The results of this study indicated that spatiotemporal distribution of TPA coverage was consistent with the typical logic of the Chinese government in policy implementation based on spatial and social marginalisation. Media attention on TPA is influenced by economic, environmental, and community sustainability indicators, reflecting the sustainability trade-offs in TPA-related media coverage. The keywords embedded in media coverage indicated that agricultural product promotion in extremely impoverished areas and the experiences of economically developed agricultural areas were essential for poverty eradication. Keywords emphasise top-down administrative-led poverty governance for extremely impoverished areas and local autonomy for relatively impoverished areas. This study provides perspectives for antipoverty governance and media empowerment in the postpoverty era in China.