Thread by @AlexDukalskis

Please see my new article with @sbrazys_ucd in @JoDemocracy

It analyzes the global messaging of Xinhua - China's main state news agency - in several languages.

[Thread] journalofdemocracy.org/articles/china…

It takes a 30,000 foot view - analyzing tone & topics in hundreds of thousands articles over a 5-year period.

Obvs there are strengths & weaknesses to this approach, but esp given how many foreign news agencies have content agreements w/ Xinhua, we find some interesting things:

1. Xinhua adjusts its messages for different linguistic audiences.

Articles in Korean & Japanese, for example, are mostly about how great and neighborly China is without talking about Korea or Japan much.

Articles in English or French or (to a lesser extent) Spanish, on the other hand, still extol China but feature much more content that is critical of "the West".

2. For external audiences, Xinhua talks about China in overwhelmingly positive tones. Articles are about how China is advancing, its leadership is wise, ect. This is the straightforward propaganda aspect of Xinhua.

3. Xinhua's tone about the United States has gotten markedly more negative every year since 2015. This is most likely a reflection of heightened US-China tensions. The effect is especially pronounced when talking about US relations with other democracies.

4. Xinhua's tone about Xinjiang has become more "positive" and upbeat since mid/late 2018 when China's policies there began to attract sustained international attention. Its response to criticism appears to deflect it with propaganda about how great the situation is.

There's other stuff in there, too.

Regular observers of China's foreign media prob won't be too surprised by our findings, but we think there's value in establishing these patterns the way we have.

You can see the full text here: muse.jhu.edu/article/766184…

Finally, it draws on and cites journalism, scholarship, and analysis by a number of observers way smarter than us (not that that's very hard), including @limlouisa @dtbyler @MariaRepnikova @austinramzy @profdanchen @Anne_MarieBrady @RollandNadege @pu_xiaoyu & many others.

FWIW this is the third of three papers by @sbrazys_ucd & I exploring various dimensions of how China’s rise is changing international norms & ideas.

Our first paper - 2017 in @RISjnl - examined changes in the international norms at the United Nations using changes in votes of recurring resolutions. cambridge.org/core/journals/…

The second of three - 2019 in @cjip_journal - explored the intersection of Confucius Institutes & the tone of local media reporting about China. academic.oup.com/cjip/article-a…

Third of three examining Xinhua content is here:

https://twitter.com/AlexDukalskis/status/1314914301719834624