Two nations in three worlds? Images of the US and China in ethnic, homeland, and host media

Abstract

This study investigates disparities in the portrayals of US and China images across ethnic media, homeland media, and host media that are serving the Chinese migrants in the United States. A quantitative content analysis of 156 news articles was conducted. Results reveal that ethnic media share more similarities with homeland media than with host media, which adds empirical explanations to ethnic and homeland media’s commonalities in retaining migrants’ ethnic identity. This also signals a pervasive impact of homeland news organizations on overseas ethnic media – although ethnic media are registered by US citizens or permanent citizens in America, they are actually owned or operated by Chinese news companies. As a result, ethnic media may have followed the same journalistic practices as their counterpart agencies from China. Implications of these findings for public opinion are also discussed.