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The Power of Positive Reporting: Examining China's Anti-Epidemic National Image in Mainstream Media

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Abstract

Covid-19 out broke gave an extreme impact to the globe, imposing a challenge to health publicly and causing social interruptions. As a result, the role of mainstream media in promoting anti-epidemic measures and disseminating national images has become increasingly important. In this study, we examine the anti-epidemic reports in 2020 from three types of international news sources, identifying 566 samples for content and text analysis. Through our analysis, we found that each component of the anti-epidemic report has a clear focus, and that these reports presented China's national image of anti-epidemic in four dimensions. Notably, the European version of People's Daily exhibited a positive reporting tendency, accounting for 86% of the total, with only 8% of reports being negative. This indicates a relatively comprehensive national image construction and communication strategy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, our research reveals the important role of media in shaping a nation's image during a global crisis. The positive reporting tendency of the European version of People's Daily reflects an effective strategy for promoting a positive national image, thereby dispelling misunderstandings and prejudices towards China's anti-epidemic measures. Our findings provide inspiration for the dissemination of national images in times of crisis, highlighting the importance of comprehensive and well-coordinated communication strategies to promote a positive image.

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Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

2021 Guangdong Education Science Planning Project "The Design and Application of Shared Intelligent Corpus of Interpreting Teaching in the Era of Technology Empowerment" (Fund No.: 2021GXJK198)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Foreign Languages, Guangdong University of Finance and Economics, Guangzhou, 510655, China

    Jie Chen & Kunpei Xu

  2. School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Yukun Chen

  3. School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710129, China

    Jiaxin Lin

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  1. Jie Chen
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  2. Kunpei Xu
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  3. Yukun Chen
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  4. Jiaxin Lin
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Correspondence to Jiaxin Lin.

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Chen, J., Xu, K., Chen, Y. et al. The Power of Positive Reporting: Examining China's Anti-Epidemic National Image in Mainstream Media. J Psycholinguist Res 52, 2047–2073 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-023-09979-8

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