Chinese National Identity and Media Framing

This study explored the relationship between Chinese national identity and media framing and priming effect by combining the two paradigms, the literature of group identity and the discourses of media cognitive effect. Extending social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981), self-categorization theory (Turner, et al., 1987) and subjective group dynamics theory (Marques, Paez, & Abrams, 1998), the current study drew the distinction between descriptive (cognitive/perceptual) and prescriptive (affective/subjective) fit of the social norms that contributed to social identity. After deliberating the macro concept (the ascribed vs. acquired) of a national identity (Westle, 2014), as well as the social, political, economic and cultural conditions in China, the structure of Chinese national identity (CNI) were delineated by three content-based categories: the meta-structure of the ethnic-cultural (MEC), the flexible ethnic-cultural (FEC), and the civic-institutional (CI) component, with each of which possessed the dichotomy of psychological dimension. The 3×2 matrix of Chinese national identity was hypothesized to have an impact, with structural variation, on evaluative judgments of alternative media frames of stories involving international disputes in China. To maximize internal and external validity, the empirical data had been collected through an online survey experiment with a sample size of 738. The theoretically argued relationship between the CNI, media framing, and the evaluative judgment was in accordance with the results derived from a series structural equation modeling analyses