News about China in European media : a quantitative content analysis

This project investigates European news coverage on China’s soft power about China. Previous research confirms a significant increase in the coverage of China (Peng, 2004) though not always in a positive manner. Studies found that news reports on economic and investment issues are less critical than the coverage of more controversial issues related to environment, copyrights, democracy, and military development, suggesting a biased approach towards the country (Estupinan, 2017; Peng, 2004). Importantly, most of these studies are geographically centered on the US (e.g. Metzgar & Su, 2017; Peng, 2004), as well as on African or Latin American countries where China has gained substantial economic influence (e.g. Diakon & Röschenthaler, 2017; Estupinan, 2017) while Europe remains an under-researched area of study. Hence, with this paper we aim to close this gap and determine the amount and the tone of news about China in European news media by means of a quantitative content analysis, in order to assess to what extent China is currently considered an important global power and thus meets the news value of “elite nations”. We will compose a representative sample and collect all articles about China in a representative period of three months (June 2018 and September-October 2018) published by BBC News, Politico.eu, Euronews.com and Financial Times. Variables include (1) the number of stories on China; (2) the topic of the news stories to unravel which topics (cf. McClory’s (2017) seven indexes of soft power: culture, digital, education, engagement, enterprise, government, and polling) are more important in European media; (3) the sources in the news (e.g. Xinhua or Western news agencies); (4) the actors represented (Chinese, European or other); and (5) the tone of the stories (positive, neutral or negative). As this is an ongoing research project, we cannot present any findings yet as these are expected in November 2018