Transnational media platforms and politics: A comparative study of American and Chinese newspaper coverage of US’s ban on TikTok by https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu What are the prominent tones and frames emerged in China Daily and New York Times coverage of TikTok ban in the United States? en-us 2020-10-25 20:53:12 UTC 2025-11-22 15:48:06 UTC hello@padlet.com Short video xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859854427 2020-10-25 21:01:15 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859854427 Background xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859858227 Asian countries play an increasingly significant role in multiple and horizontal flows of media and communication.(Thussu 2018, p. 52) As a Chinese application that was launched in the international market in 2017 and officially debuted in the United States in 2018, Tik Tok is very popular among American users. During the epidemic, it ushered in a new round of download peaks, setting a global historical record, and greatly stabilizing its position as the world's most downloaded mobile application. The success of Chinese Internet products in the United States for the first time has made the US government very uneasy, and has also raised issues such as data sovereignty for cross-border technology software. Recently, TikTok's parent company Bytedance appeared on the blacklist of the United States on the grounds that it endangered national security. U.S. President Donald Trump stated that TikTok will be banned from operating in the United States. This immediately triggered a strong reaction from all walks of life. Major media have focused on tracking the development of the incident and reporting on it.]]> 2020-10-25 21:05:25 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859858227 Methodology xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859859461 This study selected the first three months of the event as the time period for the implementation of the research, that is, July to September 2020, since the White House hinted at the beginning of July 2020 that the U.S. government may ban TikTok, the social media application. This research presents a content analysis of newspaper coverage on US’s ban on TikTok published in a Chinese newspaper, China Daily, and an American newspaper, the New York Times, from July to September 2020.
 
In order to ensure the authenticity of the data statistics process, the research will use their official website as the database. The keywords used for data retrieval were ‘TikTok’ AND ‘ban’ AND ‘US’. In addition, since India and Australia also introduced similar policies during the same period, researchers requested that "India" and "Australia" should not appear in the title of the articles when searching. A total of 21 news articles are founded during the selected period on the New York Times official website. In contrast, after the same retrieval process, 64 articles on the official website of China Daily met the requirements. The manual screening of articles led to a total of 15 relevant articles from NYT and 14 relevant articles from China Daily. Researchers will use ROSETTE software as a tool to divide and analyze the tone of different reports.]]> 2020-10-25 21:06:44 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859859461 Preliminary finding xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859868005
  • Tone
    • When reporting the US’s ban on TikTok, the New York Times and China Daily mostly maintained a neutral attitude and did not have obvious emotional inclinations. China Daily has more leaning reports than the New York Times.

    • Frames
    The most prominent of the relevant reports in China Daily is the hegemony framework, that is, condemning the US government's ban on TikTok is a kind of hegemony and illegally harming the rights and interests of Bytedance.
    The most prominent of the New York Times related reports is the neutral statement framework, which explains the reason and current situation of the incident in the report, and also reports the statements of both the US government spokesperson and TikTok spokesperson.
    ]]>     2020-10-25 21:15:49 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859868005     Conclusion xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859868868 Through a detailed content analysis of reports on the US ban on TikTok from two different media in China and the United States, the researchers found that the US media generally maintains a neutral view of the incident, combining the opinions of all parties in the report, and reporting from more diverse perspectives. This reflects the tolerance of American mainstream media to transnational media.

    The Chinese media, as a tool of propaganda and public diplomacy, usually adopt a framework that conforms to the tone of the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda to safeguard national sovereignty and interests, and condemn US hegemonic measures. This may be related to the different political systems and news dissemination systems of the two countries, or it may be related to the particularity of the reported target, so it is worthy of further analysis and exploration.]]>     2020-10-25 21:16:53 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859868868     Frames definition xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859871239 2020-10-25 21:19:24 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859871239 References xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859871908 Cushion, S., Kilby, A, Thomas, R, Morani, M & Sambrook, R. (2018). Newspapers, impartiality and television news. Journalism Studies, 19(2), 162-181.
     
    Thussu, D. (2018). A new global communication order for a multipolar world. Communication Research and Practice, 4(1), 52-66.]]>     2020-10-25 21:20:09 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859871908     Rationale xinlulyu https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859875122 Transnational media has always been one of the focuses of academic research due to the complexity of its own operations. There are many related studies in the academic circle on the relationship between transnational media and politics. After searching the relevant literature, the author found that many of the cases based on these studies are limited and outdated. However, TikTok, as an emerging and booming Chinese social platform application in the United States, is a particularly relevant and novel material for transnational media related research. Due to that “newspapers or print journalists remain a frequent reference point for rival news media, and a routine source for understanding how an event or issue is interpreted” (Cushion et al., 2018, P. 165), this study will take the reports of the two major Chinese and American mainstream media---the New York Times and China Daily on the US's ban on TikTok as examples to analyze the reporting tone and framework of transnational media platforms in the process of interacting with politics. Specifically, researcher will conduct a content analysis on the tone and framework of related reports on this topic, and then use the data obtained to further analyze the focus and discourse tendency of the two media reports, and explore the reasons behind the similarities and differences.]]> 2020-10-25 21:23:36 UTC https://padlet.com/xinlulyu/9hev8dlwiyf196mu/wish/859875122