How US and Chinese Media Cover the US–China Trade Conflict: A Case Study of War and Peace Journalism Practice and the Foreign Policy Equilibrium Hypothesis

Abstract

This article examines the news coverage of a nonmilitary conflict: The US–China trade conflict by major news media outlets in the USA and China using the war and peace journalism framework. Role in the conflict as initiator/responder, medium difference, the press role in each press system, and partisanship of news media were hypothesized to affect the war and peace journalism practice. Moreover, the trade conflict was divided into three stages to test the applicability of the “foreign policy market equilibrium hypothesis” by analyzing the changes in the uses of sources and presence of competing frames over time. US news media were found to employ more war journalism and less peace journalism than their Chinese counterpart. They also had much lower coverage of the conflict than their Chinese counterpart. Newspapers were more likely to use war journalism than television. US partisan liberal media selectively supported and opposed the US government trade policy.

Attitude change toward the Chinese during the US-China trade conflict: examining the roles of social media news sharing and perceived news feed performance

“…Public support is essential for the hardline approach that the US government adopts amid the trade conflict. Although the mainstream media and public opinion in the US are unfavorable toward the China (Ha et al , 2020b; Silver et al , 2019), our findings suggest that the information disseminated on social media has the potential of fostering a friendly environment to help reduce the tensions between the two countries. Indeed, previous studies have found that these online platforms often give voice to marginal and minority groups and provide a more diverse range of viewpoints (Dahlberg, 2007; Leung and Lee, 2014).…”

U.S. Public Opinion on China and the United States During the U.S.–China Trade Dispute: The Role of Audience Framing and Partisan Media Use

“…The measure is a sum of four items on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 5 = strongly agree to 1 = strongly disagree . The items chosen were among the most common themes in favor of China found in the trade dispute reports (Ha et al, 2020; Ray & Lu, 2020): (a) China is the victim in the trade dispute, (b) China needs to defend itself against U.S. pressure, (c) China is more successful than the United States, and (d) China supports free trade and globalization.…”

A Review on War and Peace Journalism Paradigm

“…Therefore, he advised the journalists to reveal the conditions of their coverage and think critically about the sources in order to be more transparent and reflexive. Differently, Ha, et al argued that transparency and critical views can be achieved provided that journalists recognise the limitations of news sources so that they will strive for more diversity [29]. In addition, news coverage usually contains both war and peace features because of the dual nature.…”