1 BROADER IMPACTS AND FRAMING THE GOOGLE CHINA INTERNET ISSUE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NEWSPAPER COVERAGE

On January 12, 2010, Google closed its official website in China due to China’s Internet censorship policy. After the announcement, the manner in which Google should operate appropriately in the Chinese mainland was discussed widely in Chinese and U.S. media. This research examines how four newspapers, two U.S. and two Chinese, framed the Google China Internet issue: the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and the People’s Daily and the 21st Century Business Herald. While previous framing studies often focused on influence from cultural or political factors that might cause differences in how countries framed news i.e., extra-media factors, this current study adds an exploratory view of impact from inner-media factors, e.g., media habitual activity. Results indicate that besides cultural factors (e.g. long- and short-term orientation) and political factors (e.g. national interests), media habitual activity and interest groups also play an important role in the framing process. In other words, inner-media factors’ influence may outweigh the impact of extra-media factors