The Role of the EU in an Emerging New World Order in the Eyes of the Chinese, Indian and Russian Press

ABSTRACT

One of the major global challenges that the EU currently faces is the establishment of a multipolar world order with Emerging Powers—Brazil, Russia India, China and South Africa—as prospective cooperation partners. News media is the key information gatekeeper. Therefore, this research probes the EU’s place in the emerging world order by scrutinizing the visibility and framings of the EU’s dyadic relations with China, India and Russia in the daily coverage of leading press in these three ‘rising powers’. We investigate the importance newsmakers ascribe to the EU’s dyadic interactions at the time of the Euro debt crisis in terms of volume, intensity and evaluation of EU representations and link this analysis to issue areas reported (political, economic, social, environmental or developmental). The results are discussed in the context of the importance of external perceptions studies for informed dialogue between modern-day ‘Great Powers’.

Key words:

• The European Union
• Emerging Powers
• new world order
• dyadic interactions
• framing in Chinese
• Russian and Indian press

Acknowledgement

Media data researched in this chapter was collected within the framework of the transnational research project ‘The EU in the Eyes of Asia Pacific’ (www.euperceptions.canterbury.ac.nz), and specifically during its 2011–2012 stage, ‘After Lisbon: The EU as an Exporter of Values and Norms through ASEM’ (research grant by Jean Monnet Lifelong Learning Programme, DG EAC, European Commission).

Notes

1. The first type represents a nation-wide news source reaching considerable numbers of readers and relaying political positions articulated by national governments (especially in the cases of China and Russia). The ‘business’ type of press was chosen due to its targeted readership—business professionals who are/may be dealing with the EU first-hand. The ‘popular’ papers are published in national languages (Mandarin, Hindu and Russian) respectively.

2. Three researchers led the cases considered in this paper: Olga Gulyaeva, Suet-Yi Lai and Shreya Pandey were research trained within intensive research training programme of the project ‘The EU in the Eyes of Asia-Pacific’ led by Chaban and Holland.