The mediated engagement of Switzerland with BRI: a transnational comparative framing analysis

This paper offers a transnational comparative framing analysis of leading legacy news media in Switzerland (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, abbreviated to NZZ, in German) and China (China Daily in English) in their coverage of Swiss engagement with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2017 and 2019. The results implied a clear dominance of both newspapers’ economic and political actors and related frames. By introducing a geopolitical frame into the generic frame categories and adding an economy-driven frame into domestic frame categories based on the current framing pool from Transcultural Comparative Framing Model (TCFM), the study discussed how the two newspapers shared the same focus by frequency but differed from each other in the contextual discourse through argumentation. China Daily preferred to report from a general and positive overview, focusing on bilateral relations between China and Switzerland. In contrast, NZZ intended to cover more about specific Swiss industries and international actors such as the European Union and the United States, presenting a hybrid perspective towards BRI. The study found a clear presence of ideology-driven and political-position-driven frames on both newspapers—NZZ in particular. Given the importance of cultural congruence in framing studies, the study calls for an inclusion of more cultural notions and a general transcultural frame for reporting and researching emerging transnational topics through TCFM. Only when a discursive space is created with respect to different cultural patterns, might resonation in communicative encounters and conceptualization repertoires become possible.