Framing the economy of the East African Community: A decade of disparities and similarities found in Chinese and Western news media’s reporting on the East African Community

Abstract

This study examines how the economic climate of the East African Community was covered in Chinese and Western news media between 2005 and 2015. Framing devices measuring risk, opportunity, morality and valence were detected and analysed in four news agencies. A content analysis showed that both the Chinese and Western news media featured opportunism more prominently than risk, and this positivity regarding the East African Community increased with time. However overall, the Western media framed the East African Community more in terms of potential risks than the Chinese media. The Western media featured the voice of African actors more often, and in doing so, the economy of the East African Community was framed somewhat less optimistically. Altogether, this study provides insight into the different ways that the Chinese and the Western news media framed the East African Community over the past decade.

Western and Chinese media representation of Africa in COVID-19 news coverage

“…Madrid-Morales and Gorfinkel (2018, p. 917), in their study of the documentary series Faces of Africa, broadcast on CGTN Africa, concluded that the documentary 'allows a more positive and humane portrayal of African people'. The East African community economy is featured more optimistically by Chinese media through focussing on opportunities only rather than the risk frame more prominently used by Western media (James & Boukes, 2017). Li (2016) also showed that Chinese media portray a bright future in Africa.…”

“…Fair, 1993;Hammett, 2013;Jarosz, 1992;Ogunyemi, 2011;Zhang & Matingwina, 2016) and Chinese media coverage of events/issues in the continent (e.g. Delgado, 2016;Franks & Ribet, 2009;James & Boukes, 2017;Madrid-Morales & Gorfinkel, 2018). However, sourcing that mainly shapes media representation has been overlooked by scholars in studying how global media portray Africa.…”