China in the eyes of news media: a case study under COVID-19 epidemic

As one of the early COVID-19 epidemic outbreak areas, China attracted the global news media’s attention at the beginning of 2020. During the epidemic period, Chinese people united and actively fought against the epidemic. However, in the eyes of the international public, the situation reported about China is not optimistic. To better understand how the international public portrays China, especially during the epidemic, we present a case study with big data technology. We aim to answer three questions: (1) What has the international media focused on during the COVID-19 epidemic period? (2) What is the media’s tone when they report China? (3) What is the media’s attitude when talking about China? In detail, we crawled more than 280 000 pieces of news from 57 mainstream media agencies in 22 countries and made some interesting observations. For example, international media paid more attention to Chinese livelihood during the COVID-19 epidemic period. In March and April, “progress of Chinese vaccines,” “specific drugs and treatments,” and “virus outbreak in U.S.” became the media’s most common topics. In terms of news attitude, Cuba, Malaysia, and Venezuela had a positive attitude toward China, while France, Canada, and the United Kingdom had a negative attitude. Our study can help understand China’s image in the eyes of the international media and provide a sound basis for image analysis.