US Media Coverage of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Dispute

Abstract

Given that many Americans pay scant attention to international news stories, it is safe to predict that most are not familiar with the dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. It is also all but certain that most of those who have heard of the islands would be unable to locate them on a map. This is not unusual of course as it is often claimed that Americans cannot find other nations on a map until they are at war with them. My research suggests, however, that from 2011 to 2013 those who read leading print media sources in the United States (or the Internet sites of these legacy news organizations) would have encountered significant coverage of the controversy over sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Readers could access thorough, systematic, and relatively detailed discussions of the issue in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Time, Forbes, Bloomberg News, and the Economist (although this last is a UK publication its largest circulation is in the United States, so I include it in this discussion). It is noteworthy, and it also gives an important glimpse into how the issue was framed as an economic threat to the global order, that the business press was especially attentive to the controversy. Newspapers other than those identified here also ran stories on the issue, but in most cases their coverage was not systematic and most of their stories were reprinted from the sources listed or taken from the newswires.