International Broadcasting During Times of Conflict: A Comparison of China’s and Russia's Communication Strategies

ABSTRACT

The vital role of international broadcasting during times of international conflict has gained increasing attention; however, national variations in terms of communication strategies have rarely been explored in depth. This study fills this research gap by providing a comparative analysis of the communication strategies of Chinese and Russian state-sponsored international broadcasters. By examining CGTN’s coverage of the South China Sea arbitration and RT’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, we find that the Chinese international broadcaster preferred official Chinese sources and a peace frame during a time of conflict, whereas its Russian counterpart tended to engage with Western countercultural speakers and present conflict frames. We further interpret the two media’s different usage of sources and frames in the light of the media’s organizational culture and the sponsoring states’ national identities. The research advances the scholarship on the increasingly intensive information war between the East and the West through the way international broadcasters cover international conflicts. It enriches our understanding of the cultural and national dynamics underpinning the non-Western emerging countries’ approaches of international communication.

KEYWORDS:

• International broadcasting
• public diplomacy
• international conflicts
• South China Sea arbitration
• Ukraine crisis
• Chinese foreign policy
• Russian foreign policy

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Full coding of the corpus is available from the corresponding author upon request.

2 The countries range from Asia (Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Lebanon), Africa (Rwanda, Tanzania), Latin America (Brazil, Chile), and Oceania (Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea).

3 As per watchdog journalism, news media is perceived as an independent monitor of state power that holds the public sector accountable for civil society (Norris 2014); however, foreign news media organizations may interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [Grant number: 2022M712941]; Asia Media Research Center, Communication University of China [Grant number: AMRC2022-12].