This study focuses on how the global news media report on protests in China. It contributes an original analysis of the global news media coverage of protests in China from both the theoretical and empirical perspectives. The research is based on the purposive sampling of the BBC and CNN, in order to discuss how international news media outlets report on protests in mainland China, 2011-2016, especially given that they are non-Western contexts. Samples from Wukan are evaluated by using both quantitative and qualitative methods, including framing analysis and critical discourse analysis to determine the ways in which they are represented by the selected news outlets. The main findings have revealed hegemony in the news representations of protests in China, which includes biases, domestication, and geopolitical news angles. The analysis in the Wukan case showed that the reports offered a limited voice to the Chinese side, while carrying frames of bias from Western journalists. The analysis of the selected global news reports unmasked ideological presuppositions about Chinese political reform, including the perception that the Chinese regime was monolithic, and that most Chinese protesters craved Western democracy. The research has found that the predominance of one voice and absence of another has produced hegemony in the reports, which could be analysed as techniques of reporting, including vocabulary choices, rhetorical devices, and moral and emotional basis. To give an example, the slogan in the article saying “Long live the Communist Party”, whereas there were completely opposite messages from the protesters in CNN’s article. The research findings add to work by other scholars in media and journalism that has questioned the partiality of leading international or global (Western) media, particularly when it comes to reporting on non-Western and less developed countries. The research adds original evidence and insights to debates on the hegemony of international news coverage of protests, in the context of the Global South. It should be noted that leading media from the dominant Global North, in this case, excluding Al Jazeera, project the interests of the developed countries while voices from the Global South are less heard.
Cite this paper
Zhang, R. (2025). Framing China’s Protests in Western International News: An Analysis of the Coverage of the Wukan Protests by CNN and the BBC. Open Access Library Journal, 12, e14276. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1114276.
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