从文化价值观分析中美社会新闻报道的差异—以 2013
年《中国日报》与《纽约时报》就中国环境污染的报道为例
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
Background of the Research
In recent decades, China has witnessed rapid development with
its internationalstatus and international influence constantly
ascending and enhancing. At the sametime, the issues concerning
China have attracted considerable attention from westernsociety
in terms of political, economic, social aspects, etc. Nowadays,
China has beenlisted on the second largest economy after
America. On the international level, Chinahas become the focus
of attention, and the world is eager to understand
, China’s mainstream media is also trying to
introduce China throughvarious channels to the global audience.
Those phenomena above can be easilyobserved from the increasing
amount of the media’s attention to Chinese issues inwestern
countries.
On the national level, it has been widely witnessed that
dramatic changes haveoccurred in China in recent decades with
the acceleration of globalization and thetendency toward
pluralism. On the one hand, accompanied by
remarkableachievements in economy and other fields, a series of
thorny issues have emerged atthe same time. For example, the
economic and social developments are stillunbalanced.
Furthermore, environmental issues are becoming more serious.
Most ofthe problems are excessively concerned by the public. In
addition, with thedevelopment of globalization, China has been
placed under the spotlight in the wholeworld. While as one of
the important means of China’s external communication,China
Daily is an important window for the world to read about China.
On the other hand, China is depicted by the international
media, especiallywestern elite media outlets. It is also
important because they have a considerableimpact on the
perception of the international public on Chinese society, and
the imagetends to be different from that in the Chinese media.
Therefore, it is academicallyrelevant and important to
comparatively analyze how China is represented incross-national
contexts.
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The Significance of the Research
There are several reasons for the author to choose China Daily
and New YorkTimes as the research objectives:
First of all, China and the United States are the
representative countries of theeast and the west. Although the
development of their news media is different, theyhave
similarities and differences so that the two media have a larger
comparable spacein the coverage of the news reporting.
Next, China Daily is a more influential English newspaper in
China and it hasbeen preferred and regarded as a more credible
English-language newspaper byhigh-end people at home and abroad.
New York Times is one of the mostrepresentative high-quality
newspapers of the United States. Therefore, this thesistries to
analyze the characteristics of social news reports in China
Daily and New YorkTimes through the comparison of two
representative news media as a sample. What ismore, reasons why
the differences are caused are analyzed from the perspective
ofcross cultural communication. At the same time, it is hoped
that the Chinesejournalists will pay attention to the problems
of social news reports, recognize the gapbetween China and the
United States in the reporting of social news and learn thegood
aspects from news values of American news reports.
To some extent, the news reports not only contain the
dissemination of newsinformation. From the dissemination process
of information fragments, it has replaceda certain social and
cultural trends of the forward-looking and continuity. As a
productof human ideology, in short, it has been the executor of
cultural field.
Firstly, social news reports, as the emerging news in recent
years, reflect thesocial ethics and moral relations of a
country. At the same time, it embodies the socialphenomena,
social atmosphere, social problems and anecdotes in nature and
, it is closely related to its own culture.
Secondly, in the content of theresearch, simply taking the news
of China and the United States as the center, manyscholars
employ different news media such as newspapers, television
programs as aresearch object to study the characteristics of
Sino-US news reports.
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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
Studies Abroad
The study of Chinese and American social news reports belongs
to the categoryof comparative journalism. The birth of
comparative journalism dates back to 1956when the book Four
Theories of the Press co-authored by three American
journalistsWilbur Schramn, Theodore Peterson and Fred S.
Siebert, was published. “It is worththe name the cornerstone of
comparative journalism because this book gives the worlda first-
ever global view of the intricacies of the press. In fact, the
thinking of westerncomparative journalists still has not jumped
out of the traditional case” (Zhang Dawei28).
From the twentieth century, American scholars began to study
Chinesenewspapers. For example, the more famous are Patterson’s
paper China’s journalism,Y. P. Wang’s paper the rise of
Chinese local newspapers, paper The origin of Chinesejournalism
of an American scholar and Rhett White’s monograph China’s
periodicalnewspaper: 1800-1911.
Through the collection and collation of the materials, the
author finds that thereare few studies on the news reports in
China, especially the research on Chinese socialnews reports.
However, there are abundant researches on the news reports of
theirown countries, especially in the field of investigative
reports.
On the one hand, American scholars are mostly concerned about
the US localsocial news reports. As one of the social news
reports, investigative reports have beenthe concern and
attention of Western journalists. First of all, in the
definition of investigative reports, many well-known scholars
give their own definition. Here aresome definitions as follows.
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Studies at Home
Domestic scholars mostly concentrate on comparative study of
the Sino-US newsreports in the field of journalism. A
Comparative Study of Sino - Japanese Journalismin the Past 100
Years written by Du Chaobin which was published in 1931 is one
ofthe works of Comparative journalism. While after 1949, the
study of comparativejournalism is interrupted due to the long-
standing Cold War between the East and theWest. In the 1980s,
there are a series of works of comparative journalism written
byLi Zhan and other scholars in Taiwan. It is not until the
1990s that there are someresearches in Chin’s comparative
journalism. For example, Tao Han's ComparativeJournalism
published in 1994 makes a systematic introduction to western
journalismtheories and Marxist journalism theories on media
ownership, management, worldnews history, press law, press
freedom and so on. In addition, it also makes ahorizontal
comparison in several countries. Liu Xiatang’s Comparative
Journalismwhich is published in 1997 takes Chinese and foreign
news theories, culture andbusiness three aspects into
comparison. What is more, The Comparison of the History of
Chinese and Western News, edited by Tong Bing in 1999 compares
Chinese andwestern editorial policy, the media organization
structure, the social regulation of themedia, the news concept
and so on. In the 21st century, the Renmin University ofChina
Press publishes Comparative News Communication edited by Tong
Bing in2002, which can be said that it is a summary of the
previous comparison of journalismresearch. Although there are
duplication in the content with the previous Chinese andWestern
News Outline, it is still a relatively high level of research in
China’scomparative journalism study since this book is very
objective and profound withoutideological tone of the old tune.
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CHAPTER III THEORIES AND METHODOLOGY....................... 14
Hofstede’s Value Dimensions Theory................ 14
Individualism and Collectivism
.........................14
Uncertainty Avoidance............ 15
CHAPTER IV CONTENT ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF NEWSIN
CHINA DAILY AND NEW YORK TIMES ........... 21
Content Analysis in China Daily and New York Times
.............. 21
The Number of News................ 21
Genre of News .................... 22
CHARTER V THE REASONS FOR DIFFERENCES OF SOCIAL NEWSREPORTING
IN CHINA DAILY AND NEW YORK TIMES ............. 35
Confucian Culture vs. Christian
Culture......................... 35
Confucian Culture and Its Reflection in News Reporting
..................... 35
Christian Culture and Its Reflection in News Reporting
....................... 38
CHARTER VTHE REASONS FOR DIFFERENCES OF SOCIAL NEWSREPORTING IN
CHINA DAILY AND NEW YORK TIMES
Confucian Culture vs. Christian Culture
Society is a reflection of the culture of a country. The
leading cultures areConfucian culture fused with Taoism and
Buddhism in China and Christian culture inthe United States.
Confucian Culture and Its Reflection in News Reporting
First of all, taking the history as the background, China is an
ancient countrywith thousands of years of brilliant
civilization. The most profound and the greatestinfluence on
Chinese culture is Confucianism. According to Meng Peiyuan,
“thevirtual existence of Confucius and the thought Confucianism
of mankind is based on emotional activity rather than abstract
reasoning” (26). In addition, Confucianismbelieves that heaven,
the earth and human are a harmonious unity. Therefore, peopleare
not isolated in a certain relationship. In addition, all things
should be considered ina global and holistic manner. In
addition, the core value of Confucianism is “Ren”,which
directs to the word “group”, such as group honour, group
interest, harmony,uniformity and unity in society. Thus,
Confucianism emphasizes more on the groupconsciousness and
social consciousness. Consequently, the Chinese people
generallyhold the idea that personal interest should obey the
social and the group Confucianism, Taoism and
Buddhism also have profound influence on thetraditional Chinese
thinking patterns.
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CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION
Major Findings and Suggestions
Air pollution is an important problem in social issues, to
which the public havepaid much attention in today’s China.
Besides, as a social monitor, the news mediahave the
responsibility to bear the reports of social news to help the
public to build aharmonious society. In addition, the
differences in history and culture determine thedominant values
of a person which have great influences on the news reporting.
Based on the comparative analysis in this thesis, the author
realizes that hugedifferences in the social news reports of
Chinese and American Media exist in airpollution. Firstly, it is
concluded that the content of the news report is regular in
ChinaDaily which lacks the diversity in reporting angles
especially reflected in in-depthreports and investigative
reports just like in New York Times. Next, according to thetone
of reporting, the reports of social news of China Daily tend to
be positive andneutral, while the tendency in New York Times is
more negative and neutral in thesame news reporting. Besides,
some data reported in social news are different inChina and in
America, which causes the doubts of America to the Chinese data.
Inaddition, the American social reports and Chinese social news
reports reveal thehumanistic caring in news media from different
way. Last but not least, the Americansocial news reports involve
the relevant problems to the Chinese government, whilethe social
news reports in China emphasize more on the actions and
determination ofthe government.
According to different characteristics above, the reasons are
also analyzed in thefollowing theories in both cross-cultural
communication and communication fields.
reference(omitted)
