Framing the economy of the East African Community: A decade of disparities and similarities found in Chinese and Western news media’s reporting on the East African Community

Abstract

This study examines how the economic climate of the East African Community was covered in Chinese and Western news media between 2005 and 2015. Framing devices measuring risk, opportunity, morality and valence were detected and analysed in four news agencies. A content analysis showed that both the Chinese and Western news media featured opportunism more prominently than risk, and this positivity regarding the East African Community increased with time. However overall, the Western media framed the East African Community more in terms of potential risks than the Chinese media. The Western media featured the voice of African actors more often, and in doing so, the economy of the East African Community was framed somewhat less optimistically. Altogether, this study provides insight into the different ways that the Chinese and the Western news media framed the East African Community over the past decade.