Who set the narrative? Assessing the influence of Chinese global media on news coverage of COVID-19 in 30 African countries

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11320%2F21%3A10441680" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11320/21:10441680 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=NSN9xRQCgl" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=NSN9xRQCgl</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20594364211013714" target="_blank" >10.1177/20594364211013714</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Who set the narrative? Assessing the influence of Chinese global media on news coverage of COVID-19 in 30 African countries

Original language description

The size of China&apos;s State-owned media&apos;s operations in Africa has grown significantly since the early 2000s. Previous research on the impact of increased Sino-African mediated engagements has been inconclusive. Some researchers hold that public opinion toward China in African nations has been improving because of the increased media presence. Others argue that the impact is rather limited, particularly when it comes to affecting how African media cover China-related stories. This article contributes to this debate by exploring the extent to which news media in 30 African countries relied on Chinese news sources to cover China and the COVID-19 outbreak during the first-half of 2020. By computationally analyzing a corpus of 500,000 written news stories, this paper shows that, compared to other major global players (e.g. Reuters, AFP), content distributed by Chinese media (e.g. Xinhua, China Daily) is much less likely to be used by African news organizations, both in English and French speaking countries. The analysis also reveals a gap in the prevailing themes in Chinese and African media&apos;s coverage of the pandemic. The implications of these findings for the sub-field of Sino-African media relations, and the study of global news flows are discussed.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50802 - Media and socio-cultural communication

Project

—

Continuities

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Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Global Media and China

ISSN

2059-4364

e-ISSN

2059-4372

Volume of the periodical

6

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

23

Pages from-to

129-151

UT code for WoS article

000662942400002

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85105917507