Contesting legitimacy in China’s crisis communication
a framing analysis of reported social actors engaging in SARS and COVID-19
Additional information
Authors
Zhang Z.
Type
Journal Article
Year
2022
Language
English
Abstract
The study provided a framing analysis of China Daily in its coverage of the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics. By understanding social actors as a particular frame element, the study introduced word-frequency-based cluster analysis as a method of corpus collection and generation for qualitative frame analysis. The study identified four main social actor groups and 14 news frames during the two pandemics. The discursive centrality of the Chinese government among other social actors from China Daily and the persistent positive portrait of the government’s institutional performance under the responsibility-solution frame is discussed. The results imply that China’s crisis communication did not experience much change from reporting SARS to reporting COVID-19. In particular, the drop in frame diversity and the focus on information uniformity in reporting the pandemic may have limited the effectiveness of the Chinese news media in accessing international awareness and contributing to the global meaning construction of the unfolding crisis.
Keywords
Crisis communication, Framing analysis, Social actors, Legitimacy, Pandemic, Chinese government
Journal
Chinese journal of communication
Volume
15
Number ( Month )
2
Pages (or article number)
182-204
Diffusion
License
CC BY-NC-ND
Visibility
Public
Status open access
Hybrid
