Framing Pandemics: Continuities and Challenges in China's Outbound Crisis Communication

This chapter conducted a framing analysis of China Daily’s coverage of the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics, with a specific focus on the representation of social actors as a core framing element. To support the qualitative frame analysis, it introduced a novel methodological approach by employing word-frequency-based cluster analysis for corpus collection and generation. The chapter identified four major social actor groups and 14 distinct news frames across the two pandemics. Notably, it highlighted the discursive centrality of the Chinese government, which consistently occupied a dominant narrative position among the social actors featured in the coverage. This centrality was particularly evident in the recurring use of the responsibility-solution frame, which contributed to a persistently positive portrayal of the government’s institutional performance. The findings suggest a remarkable continuity in China’s crisis communication strategy, as evidenced by the minimal change in framing patterns between the SARS and COVID-19 outbreaks. In particular, the observed decline in frame diversity and the heightened emphasis on information uniformity in COVID-19 reporting may have constrained the capacity of the Chinese news media to engage international audiences effectively. This limitation potentially hindered their role in shaping global narratives and contributing to the global meaning construction during the unfolding crisis.