Critical Issues
Assignment in Week 3 (Agenda setting and framing)
China-Africa relations in the world press
What is the media agenda regarding China-Africa relations in different media in the
world? What are the most relevant topics, economic-business issues (Chinese
investments in Africa); political-diplomatic issues; the Arab springs; environmental
issues; tourism; media; culture; sports; or anything else? Leaving sports aside, what are
the typical frames of interpretation in the stories? Who are the typical news sources?
What is the typical language like? What are the typical metaphors? Are the articles
negative/critical, or positive of China’s growing role in Africa, and why? What are the
differences among newspapers in the same country? And what are the national
differences?
Please write about one page (single space, excluding article titles and links) about the
coverage of China-Africa relations in a national newspaper or other online media text
(news agency, website) of your choice.
Guidelines:
1. Read the three required articles for Class 3 (McCombs and Shaw; Entman; Lee et
al.) as they may be thought provoking. In fact, Lee et al. did a similar project
about the takeover of Hong Kong in the world press.
2. Select a national newspaper in the HKU Library’s electronic database (or an
online news source with a good search engine) from your country/Hong Kong.
3. Coordinate in your Section with colleagues from the same country/Hong Kong to
avoid overlap. (Most of you already did this in the sections). You may choose a
Chinese language newspaper, or any newspaper in the/a language of your home
country. In the case of non-English newspapers, always translate the title of the
articles and the important terms so your paper can be fully understood by an
English language reader.
4. Run the keywords “China” and “Africa” in the search engine for the last 1 year. If
you have less then 20 articles (excluding sports), expand the search to 2 or more
years. If still there are very few articles, extend the search for up to 5 years. If
there are still very few articles, document this negative finding, and choose
another newspaper/source.
5. Do a simple quantitative content analysis. Look at your findings. What are the
typical topics? With your classmates from the same country, formulate categories
that you feel relevant. For example, viable categories could be 1. economicbusiness issues (Chinese investments in Africa); 2. political-diplomatic issues, 3.
China and the Arab springs; 4. China-Africa environmental issues; 5. ChinaAfrica tourism; 6. China-Africa media relations; 7. China-Africa cultural issues;
8. China-Africa sports news; 9. Marginal articles (where it just happened that both
keywords are mentioned). This is just one optional categorization. Formulate your
6.
7.
8.
9.
own relevant content categories with your classmates from the same country to
ensure comparability of newspapers from the same country. Count how many
articles fall into your categories, and present the findings in a table.
Do a simple qualitative analysis about the articles that you consider most
important and typical. Who are the typical sources? What is the typical language
like? What are the typical metaphors? Are the articles negative/critical, or positive
regarding China’s role in Africa? Please always include the title, date and link of
the most important articles you analyze (e.g., in footnotes).
Write up your findings in about one page (excluding links). You may summarize
the quantitative findings in one or two paragraphs and a summary table. You may
explore the qualitative analysis in two or three paragraphs if that is viable. Please
write one paragraph of summary and opinion. What do you think about the
coverage in terms of quantity and quality? Is it the coverage sufficient or marginal
in terms of quantity? Is the agenda too focused on one topic, or broad enough?
(Please evaluate relevance of agenda [quantity] with a grade between A and D or
F.) How about the quality of the coverage – generally good or poor (please
evaluate quality with a grade between A and D or F). Summarize your opinion in
two or three concluding sentences. Your own text in the paper should be about 1
page. The titles of and links to the articles should added to that.
Submission. In the first lines of your paper please include your name; Section; the
title of the newspaper; and the dates of the period under review. Students from the
same country/Hong Kong, please merge your individual files into “country files”
in each Section (for easier reading and comparison of findings). In the merged
files, each student’s paper should be separate from the others. (In Section C, some
students do group projects. In such cases you may co-author the full paper if you
wish.) If you are alone in your section doing a specific country, you may submit
alone, or even better if you can merge the file with other “single country” papers
(again, for easier reading and comparison). When you send me the country files,
please indicate in the Subject of the email the country (China, UK, etc.) and your
Section (A, B, or C).
Several students in Section C decided to do group projects, i.e., write together,
comparing Chinese vs. English coverage by Xinhua in a few years, or other small
projects. In this case, the papers could be co-authored. All students have the
alternative to form small teams and co-author papers this way if you wish.
Actually, I would encourage such collaboration as 1+1 may be more than 2,
because co-authors engage in creative exchanges. The more synergy the better. In
case of co-authored papers, the length of the paper should be one page per person.
Please send the country files (or single country papers) at least 24 hours before
your section begins. In the sections next week, we will discuss the findings.
This may look complicated, but in fact isn’t. I give these guidelines to ensure
standardization and comparability. The more we standardize the more we can see the
differences. We will learn what the differences are among newspapers in the same
country, and also among national modes of coverage.
Feel free to write me any time if you have any questions, or need clarification.
I hope you will enjoy your work.
Best regards,
Miklos