Canada's twenty-first century discovery of China: Canadian media coverage of China and Japan

ABSTRACT

Chinese government officials and some Canadian foreign policy experts have challenged the content and tone of Canadian media's coverage of China. Canadian media coverage is thought to negatively bias public opinion and thereby constrain foreign policy choices available to policymakers. Scholars of Canada–Japan relations worry that decreasing media attention could have longer term effects on bilateral ties. Through an analysis of over 30,000 articles appearing in three major Canadian news publications over a 15-year time span (2000–2015), we identify how news about these countries is framed to the Canadian public and how these frames change over time. Our central finding is that the Canadian media experienced a “twenty-first century discovery of China” in 2004–2005. The volume of coverage of Chinese economic news spiked, while coverage of political rights declined, portraying China as a leader in the global economy and therefore a viable economic partner. Yet we find that media coverage is only loosely tied to public opinion. Counterintuitively, Canadian attitudes toward China have become more negative with increased positive news coverage, while declining coverage of Japan is correlated with increasingly positive views of the country.

RÉSUMÉ

Des représentants du gouvernement chinois et quelques experts en politique étrangère canadienne remettent en question le contenu et le ton de la couverture médiatique canadienne de la Chine. Ils considèrent que celle-ci a une influence négative sur l’opinion publique et, par conséquent, restreint les options de politique étrangère envisageables par les décideurs politiques. Des spécialistes des relations entre le Canada et le Japon craignent qu’une baisse de l’attention médiatique sur ce dernier pays ait un plus long effet à long terme sur les liens bilatéraux. Grâce à l’analyse de plus de 30.000 articles parus dans trois journaux d’information importants au Canada, sur une durée de 15 ans (2000–2015), nous avons observé comment les informations sur ces pays sont formulées pour le public canadien, et comment ces formulations changent au fil du temps. Notre constatation principale est que les médias canadiens ont vécu une « découverte de la Chine au vingt et unième siècle » en 2004-2005. La couverture des informations économiques de la Chine a alors connu un pic, tandis que celle des droits politiques a diminué, ce qui a eu pour effet de positionner la Chine comme un leader de l’économie mondiale, et de ce fait, comme un partenaire économique fiable. Pourtant notre analyse révèle que la couverture médiatique n’est que faiblement liée à l’opinion publique. De façon contre-intuitive, les attitudes des canadiens sont devenues plus négatives vis-à-vis de la Chine, dans un contexte de couverture médiatique de plus en plus favorable à ce pays, tandis que la diminution des informations sur le Japon est corrélée à des opinions de plus en plus positives de ce pays.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Japan
• media analysis
• public opinion
• trade

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Linda Elmose, Shaun Narine, Charles Labrecque, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Nathan Allen is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University, and previously worked as the Project Manager for Surveys and Research Design at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. His recent work on Canada–Asia relations and elections in Asia has appeared in International Journal, Pacific Affairs, Asian Journal of Political Science and Electoral Studies.

Andrea Lawlor is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at King's University College at Western University. Her research focuses on the role of media in the policy process, campaign finance regulation and Canadian institutions. Recent articles can be found in Journal of Social Policy, Canadian Journal of Political Science and International Journal of Communications, among others.

Katerina Graham is a graduate of King's University College at Western University, where she completed an Honours Specialization in political science. She will begin pursuing an MA in political studies at Queen's University in September 2017. Her areas of research interest include contemporary political theory, critical theory and democratic theory.

Notes

1. After the United States and the European Union.

2. All APF Canada survey results are available at the Foundation's website. These are national samples with surveys conducted in both English and French. Data from a total of 10 national surveys were examined in this study (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). Not all questions were asked in each survey; where appropriate, we note the relevant year(s).

3. “Generally speaking, would you say each of the following countries or regions is important or not important to Canada's prosperity: [China/Japan].” Years the question was asked: 2010–2014, 2016.

4. Years examined: 2010–2014, 2016.

5. Years asked: 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010–2014, 2016.

6. The inclusion of Quebec in the surveys and not the media analysis does create a potential problem, in that there is some modest divergence in the units of analysis. While some regional variance exists that may be explained by differences in media coverage, trends over time tend to occur across regions (e.g. the ‘warming’ toward Japan).

7. The 500 and 1000 figures may seem arbitrary; however, they represent phrases and words that would have been mentioned over 30 and 60 times per year – in other words, terms that are used frequently enough that they might resonate with readers.

8. Lexicoder is a text analysis program that takes a standard counting or semantic independence approach, treating each individual article as the unit of analysis. It also recognizes lexical patterns such as co-occurrence of words/phrases and tone of words/phrases. See Young and Soroka (2012) for an elaborate explanation and results of validity/reliability testing.

9. Although Canadian newspapers are not ideological to the same degree as many European publications, it can be suggested that – to the extent that there are broad ideological patterns to newspapers in Canada – the National Post is slightly more right of center than the Globe and Mail on most issues, and the Toronto Star is slightly more left of center than the Globe on most issues, giving us a rough approximation of left-of-center, centrist and right-of-center newspapers. That said, two caveats should be mentioned: none of these papers is particularly ideological when compared to international media environments, nor do they have formal ties or ownership relationships with political parties, making them relatively independent and able to depart from their presumed ideological space when they so choose.

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to thank the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada for financial support.