Priming for Griming: How China’s Propaganda Shapes Images of Enemies

• In Event: Propaganda Strategies in China

Abstract

In response to domestic or international challenges, authoritarian states such as China often rely on media outlets to ratch up relevant news coverage to prime the domestic audience of the images of international enemies and persuade them into state-promoted nationalist campaigns (e.g., Stockmann 2011). But how does the party-state achieve it? And how does the priming vary? In particular, do propaganda strategies vary according to the rivalries the state is encountered with? Do various media outlets and platforms prime distinctively? To address these concerns, this article examines how China’s propaganda machine employs various media outlets (state-owned and commercialized) on distinct platforms (printed and digital media like Weibo) to shape public attitudes toward its diplomatic foes. To narrow it down, this article focuses on China’s conflicts with South Korea during their dispute on the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) installation (Jul. 2016 to Dec. 2017) and the Cross-Strait tensions after the pro-independence president Tsai Ing-wen took office in Taiwan (beginning January 2016 till currently).

Relying on a large-N computer-aided text analysis of keywords and cues of more than 60,000 realistic printed news articles and more than 1,000 media posts on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, regarding South Korea and Taiwan during their spats with the Chinese government, this article suggests that media outlets play an indispensable part in priming the audiences of the political themes the government desires to emphasize. First, through increasingly and consistently repeating the very issue it aims to promote, the government hopes to access the audience to the most significant messages over others. For example, during the THAAD dispute, keywords that imply the dispute and confrontation (e.g., THAAD, deployment, etc.) dominate the headline. However, when turning points come and the government would like to signal resolve, it may stop promoting cues suggesting confrontation but instead emphasize keywords cuing cooperation (e.g., cooperation, development, relations, etc.).

Also, cues that are not directly related to the conflict itself could be helpful to form stereotype of the targeted territories. For instance, cues that imply non-political contests such as international sports games and detrimental travel accidents are undergirded as a salient issue to arouse public antagonism.

However, the propaganda strategies vary according to the targets, media outlets and platforms. As findings suggest, the Chinese government purposefully promotes different agendas in propagating Korea-related news and Taiwan-related news. Different from painting S. Korea as an enemy amidst the THAAD dispute, news engaging Taiwan insists on a discourse of unification and cooperation, regardless of diplomatic frictions. Words with a tendency to undermine such atmosphere tend to be downplayed.

Moreover, distinctive media types (state-owned media versus commercialized media) and the platforms (printed newspapers versus Weibo posts) they are based on play varied roles in strengthening these images. Through comparing the keywords, topics, and sentiment (via computer-assisted sentiment analysis) selected news articles are engaged with, this article finds that, perhaps facing different audiences, commercialized media (digital media) are mostly utilized to promote nonpolitical messages, compared to state-owned media (printed media). Also, in terms of the sentiment, compared with printed media (state-owned media), digital media (commercialized media) expresses more negative sentiment in reporting rivalry territories.

As one of the few studies that examine China’s authentic news coverage of comparative diplomatic adversaries with a large-N analysis, this article makes multi-folded contributions. It first reveals sophisticated tactics authoritarian propaganda relies on to mold public attitudes to diplomatic crises and mobilize domestic supporters. It suggests that, while exposed to international pressure, the government remains cautious about who the target territories are. Compared with S. Korea which is completely a foreign state, Taiwan-related issues are more complicated and nuanced, as Taiwan is perceived as part of China. Thus, the use of languages should be meticulously, adding to current scholarship (e.g., Brady 2015). Besides, findings uncover a more dynamic media landscape in China where different media outlets and platforms play diverse roles in priming and persuading, hoping to direct varied audiences. These together, certainly, speaks to the IR literature in that it exhibits the political communication strategies an authoritarian regime would instrumentalize while handling foreign relations, and helps paint a more complete, nuanced picture of Chinese politics in garnering domestic more supports and achieving diplomatic ambitions, contributing to China studies.

Author

• Yuan Wang, Ripon College