Media representations of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the formation of public opinion in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

The increasingly warming relationship between China and Bangladesh has impacted media discourses, especially newspaper, TV, and social media such as YouTube, which play a crucial role in disseminating BRI-related information and informing the public about it. How do the Bangladeshi media portray BRI in Bangladesh in shaping public opinion? Using Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA), we have analysed media content and found that the Bangladeshi mainstream media are scarcely critical of BRI and its geopolitical, socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural impact on Bangladesh. In contrast, social media and public opinion have become more contextually informed and theoretically grounded about BRI and China.

KEYWORDS:

• Bangladesh
• BRI
• CDA
• China
• debt-trap
• media representation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The media do not tell us what to think but rather what to think about (McCombs and Shaw 1972). In framing theory, media construct reality in which people conceptualise or reorient their thinking about an issue, form their attitude towards a particular sign or image, reorganise meaning and construct their social reality (Chong and Druckman 2007).

2 When the media set the agenda, they create public awareness and concern about any issue. Media constructs reality by filtering, shaping, and reshaping it; as a result, audiences perceive some issues which media highlight and dominate their thinking and imagination over other issues. Media shapes the top-of-the-mind awareness among the audience in which they prioritise media-mediated agenda (McCombs and Valenzuela 2020).

3 The Chinese military base is in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. The base was built for US$590 million (Zhou 2017).

4 The Kyaukpyu deep-water port in the western Rakhine State of Myanmar is another project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) (Poling 2018).

5 Patenga is a sea beach of the Bay of Bengal, located in the port city of Chattogram, Bangladesh. It is one of the famous tourist spots (Khondker and Ahsan 2015).

6 Independent Television Ltd is a private 24-hour news channel. It is owned by one of Bangladesh's largest conglomerates, Beximco. They are headquartered in Tejgaon, Dhaka. It obtained its license officially from the Government of Bangladesh in March 2010.

Additional information

Funding

This research received a grant from Conference Travel and Research Grants (CTRG) at North South University in the 2019–2020 Cycle. Grant: no. CTRG-19SHSS07: [Grant Number Grant: no. CTRG-19SHSS07].