A Study on the Construction of Beijing City Image in the Mainstream Media of English-Speaking Countries

Abstract

Rooted in China's strategic needs to enhance its international communication capacity and cultural soft power, this study focuses on the construction logic of Beijing's city image in mainstream media of English-speaking countries. Adopting a combined research method of content analysis and discourse analysis, it constructs a corpus using Beijing-related reports (2020-2024) from five mainstream newspapers—The New York Times (U.S.), The Guardian (U.K.), The Globe and Mail (Canada), The Australian (Australia), and The New Zealand Herald (New Zealand), to systematically explore the characteristics of how Beijing's city image is constructed in these media outlets. The Three features are: (1) Media exposure demonstrates the characteristics of "generally low coverage, heterogeneity across countries, and event-driven dynamics"; (2) There is a structural imbalance in the mapping of Beijing's city image; (3) Significant national differences exist in theme selection. Essentially, such differences are the media reflection of the five countries' identity perceptions of China. Based on these findings, an optimization path featuring "differentiated and targeted communication+ multi-dimensional narrative upgrading + dynamic adjustment mechanism" should be adopted, so as to provide strategic support for Beijing to break free from the "othering" narrative of Western media and construct a three-dimensional and comprehensive international image.