Interplay of National Interest and Ideologies with Global Frame of War on Terror: Coverage of Tiananmen Attack in Chinese, Thai, and US Newspapers

Abstract

Chinese, Thai, and US media reports about the 10-28 Tiananmen attack were used as data to study news frames and understand how frames are constructed nationally, regionally, and globally. How these frames are borrowed and used for the sake of gaining approval and how global “war on terror” frame is used without much criticism. Study used one-week news reports about the 10-28 Tiananmen attack in 2013 from Asia News Monitor, China Daily, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal for analysis. It was found that national interest and ideologies play an important part in frame construction while globalized frames are employed to gain approval from rest of the world and become part of “us” and outcast “them”. US newspapers use analogies completely irrelevant to attack and try to use this even as a reminder for reader that Tiananmen square is historically famous for pro-democracy protests. Chinese newspapers do not employ global “war on terror”: frame to portray the 10-28 attack and avoid connecting it to global terrorism.