This study uses discourse analysis to investigate and compare the coverage of America in two Chinese official newspapers, the Chinese language People’s Daily and the English language China Daily in January in 1989, 1999, and 2009. This study compares the two newspapers in four aspects of the texts: topic selection, headline design, writing tactics, and visual components use, to find any differences in reporting tactics according to their different readerships. People’s Daily employed a constant editorial preference for political content and a provocative reporting tactics. Meanwhile, China Daily used a more global editorial approach. Its content and its reports were increasingly consistent with Western journalism criteria: accurate, brief, and clear.

With the rapid growth in the number of new media platforms in China, a large number of Internet users have been turned into citizen journalism accounts. With the digital transformation of official media, many citizen journalism accounts are often pulled into news production by official media to co-produce content. On the Chinese Internet, citizen journalism not only plays the role of challenging and influencing agenda-setting and public opinion, but also takes on the task of propagating ideology and values. This thesis explored this phenomenon of journalistic practice by using generic news frames and propaganda theories as theoretical foundations. Meanwhile, this study used mainly quantitative content analysis as research method, exploring the characteristics of news videos produced by Chinese citizen journalism accounts in collaboration with official media, and what propaganda techniques were used to help legitimize authoritarian rule. This study examined 432 collaborative videos on bilibili published by CCTV between 2020 and 2023. The findings suggest that collaborative videos tend to produce soft news with positive human interest and morality frames, while negative news mainly targets foreign countries' conflicts. Furthermore, collaborative videos mainly use soft propaganda and public opinion guidance to disseminate values and ideologies that are in line with the national interest and lead the audience to support the CPC and the government's political governance, which legitimizes authoritarian rule. These results illustrate how Chinese citizen journalism in the propaganda field contributes to the propaganda strategy of the party and the government, how it has been used to legitimize authoritarian rule, and why its characteristics are significantly different from those of the Western scholars.

In 2001, Syria opened its media outlets to private ownership for the first time in over forty years. This thesis conducts a critical discourse analysis of the economic coverage of the sole Syrian political daily newspaper al-Watan and asks how media liberalization in Syria is more so emblematic of pro-market economic reforms as opposed to media reform. In this sense, it is the economic content of al-Watan that signifies how a private media outlet – under the guiding force of “red lines” and other regulatory mechanisms, yet financially “liberated” via advertising revenue and wealthy regime-friendly backers – can demonstrate its utility to the regime by providing a reiteration of its social-market economic policies all the while existing as a public embodiment of the regime’s willingness to embrace a marketized Syrian society. Simply put, al-Watan is a perfect vehicle for propagating the regime’s gradualist pro-market reforms in the public sphere. / text

The thesis explores the evolution of Chinese travel journalism since 1978, the year China launched its economic reforms and opened to the international community and examines its role in facilitating social changes. Discussion is based on texts from the print, television and online media. Four case studies illustrate how Chinese media are influenced by the state, the market and readerships. The central argument of this thesis is that Chinese travel journalism has established itself as a recognised genre of popular journalism due to rapid growth in tourism along with market-driven reforms. Travel journalism has developed within the official media (the Party press), negotiated media (commercially oriented) and flexible (online) media. These divisions promote a range of information, advice and discussion available to travellers and tourists. In the case of the official media, the information is framed by concerns to regulate; in the case of the negotiated media, there is more scope for commercial promotions; the flexible online media allows non-professional participation. As such, the development of travel journalism reflects the evolution of Chinese media from a propaganda institution to a modernising media industry, and more recently, to a platform for personal expression and alternative voices. The government support for the development of the tourism market has been a strong spur for the growth of travel journalism, and the discourses of Chinese modernisation are carried through the popularisation of travel as a subject in the media. Chinese travel journalism provides advice on social conduct for travellers, both in domestic and international situations, and it influences national self-perceptions and international outlook. Developing in the broader context of social, economic and cultural changes, travel journalism provides a valuable gauge for the study of transformations in Chinese society and Chinese lifestyles.