Dynamic Constructed Climate Change Discourses and Discourse Networks across Newspapers in China around Three Critical Policy Moments: A Comparative Study of People’s Daily, China Daily, and Southern Weekend

Abstract

With the rapid growth of economy and carbon emissions, China has been seen as having a key role in addressing climate change and receives substantial attention from the media. In the Chinese coverage, climate change issues can be interpreted as various concerns and ideas involving the dimensions of the economy, energy and emissions, public involvement, science and ecology, and responsibility. In this sense, a discourse approach can be used to understand how the newspapers construct the climate change discourse and discourse networks in the coverage. This study selects three different newspapers in China, namely People’s Daily, China Daily and Southern Weekend. Also, it identifies three critical policy moments for observing changes in climate change discourses of China, namely the release of China’s National Climate Change Programme on 4th June, 2007, the announcement of China’s positions on the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference on 26th November, 2009 and the submission of China’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 30th June, 2015. This PhD thesis makes a primary contribution to academic studies through the application of an interpretivist discourse network approach to understanding the constructed climate change discourses in the newspapers in China. This approach employs storylines, actors and discourse network to analyse the constructed discourses. Actors are seen as news sources cited in the newspapers, and storylines refer to various statements concerning the issues identified in the coverage. Also, it contributes to existing knowledge of climate change politics and coverage of China, dynamic environmental discourses and social constructionist approach. This thesis identifies three dominant discourses constructed in the climate coverage, namely development, ecological modernisation and low carbon, which have been rising and falling in their prominence in different ways across the newspapers in China.