FRAMING THE CHINESE INVESTMENT IN AFRICA: MEDIA COVERAGE IN AFRICA, CHINA, UNITED KINGDOM, AND THE UNITED STATES Frankline Matanji A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2019 Committee: Yanqin Lu, Advisor Louisa Ha Srinivas Melkote © 2019 Frankline Matanji All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Yanqin Lu, Advisor News media coverage plays an important role in influencing people’s perception and opinion toward public affairs. This study is grounded on the framing theory to understand the tones and the frames adopted by media from various regions in the coverage of Chinese investment in Africa. Relying on the news articles collected from Factiva and Nexis Uni databases from 2013 to 2018, this study examines the media coverage in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, China, United States, and United Kingdom. This study conducts a quantitative content analysis by focusing on four tones (i.e., positive, negative, neutral, and mixed tones) and five generic frames (i.e., conflict, human interest, attribution of responsibility, morality, and economic consequences). The results indicate that Chinese, Kenyan, South African, and Nigerian media reported Chinese investment in Africa with a positive tone while media in the U.S. and the U.K. adopted a negative tone. Furthermore, each generic frame was adopted with varying levels of intensity across the countries investigated in this study. Implications are discussed in terms of how each country’s economic and political interests involved in the Chinese investment could exert influence on the news media coverage. iv I am dedicating this study to the Jumas, my beloved maternal grandparents Pius Juma and Victorine Juma and my uncle Roy Philip Juma for their love for me that knew no bounds and taught me the value of hard work and determination in life. And lastly, I am dedicating this study to the Almighty God for the guidance, strength of mind, power of mind and the protection and skills, and for giving me a healthy life to enable me to accomplish this thesis. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It truly takes a village to raise a boy. There are many people that I would like to acknowledge for their immeasurable support and kindness. I know it is overwhelming, but there are far so many people that are responsible in helping me become who I am today. To begin with, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Yanqin Lu, my advisor and chair of my thesis committee. It has been a great honor working with him as his first advisee. I am grateful to Dr. Lu and the other members of my thesis committee, Dr. Srinivas Melkote and Dr. Louisa Ha for their continuous advice, wisdom and priceless suggestions throughout the research and my time at BGSU. My utmost gratitude also goes to Dr. Saif Shahin for suggesting and encouraging me to carry out this project and equipping me with the technical know-how on how to mine research data from databases, skills that came in handy for the success of this thesis and his valuable advice. Dr. Radhika Gajjala’s motherly advice can never go unnoticed as well. My greatest acknowledgement goes to Dr. Kefa Otiso, Dr. Christine Mathenge and my mentor Bro. Francis Kerongo for their unweathering support during this academic journey. Lastly, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my best friend Rafsanul Hoque, in you I found a brother. You have become my family and haven; a brother that will be truly missed. Thank you for your priceless help that you accorded to me during the coding of this thesis. Blessy McWan with you here in the US, your care and concern for me is a new-found strength. Aimee Burns has been an exceptional family to me, a true friend that stood and supported me during my time at BGSU. My sincere acknowledgement also goes to Tarishi Verma, Kimberly Kuiper, Charnell Peters and Rik Ray for their unwavering support during my time at BGSU. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………..... 1 1.0 Background of the Study……..………………………………………………… 1 1.1 Scramble for Africa………………………………………………………...…… 2 1.2 Media Frames and Tones…………………………………………………..…… 4 1.3 Overview………………………………………………………………………… 5 CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW…………………….……………………………. 7 2.0 Framing…………………………………………………………………………. 7 2.1 Generic Media Frames and Frame Building……………………………………. 9 2.2 The Five Generic Frames of News Media……………………………………… 10 2.2.1 Conflict Frame………………………………………………………… 11 2.2.2 Human Interest Frame………………………………………………… 12 2.2.3 Economic Consequence Frame...……………………………………… 12 2.2.4 Morality Frame...……………………………………………………… 12 2.2.5 Attribution of Responsibility Frame...………………………………… 13 2.3 Tones...………...………………………………………………………………… 13 2.4 Research Questions and Hypothesis...…………………………………………… 14 CHAPTER III. METHODOLOGY………………………………….………………………. 16 3.0 Introduction……..……………………………………………………………….. 16 3.1 Newspaper Overview…………………………………………………………….. 17 3.1.1 The Daily Nation...…………………………………………………….. 17 3.1.2 The Vanguard………………………………………………………….. 17 vii 3.1.3 Mail and Guardian……………………………………………………. 17 3.1.4 China Daily………..………………………………………………….. 17 3.1.5 The New York Times………………………………………………….. 18 3.1.6 The Guardian...……..………………………………………………….. 18 3.2 Time Frame…………..…………………………………………………………. 19 3.3 Research Design….…..…………………………………………………………. 19 3.4 Independent Variable...…………………………………………………………. 20 3.5 Dependent Variable…..…………………………………………………………. 20 3.6 Measurement of Frames and Tones…………………………………………….. 21 3.6.1 Attribution of Responsibility Frame (Cronbach’s α = .74)………………………………………………………………....……………………….. 21 3.6.2 Human Interest Frame (Cronbach’s α = .69)………………………….. 21 3.6.3 Conflict Frame (Cronbach’s α = .91)………………………………….. 21 3.6.4 Morality frame (Cronbach’s α = .75)………………………………….. 22 3.6.5 Economic frame (Cronbach’s α = .48)………………………………… 22 3.7 Inter-Coder Reliability Analysis………………………………………………… 23 CHAPTER IV. RESULTS…………………………………………………………………. 26 4.0 Introduction…….……………………………………………………………….. 26 4.1 Tone Analysis Results…..………………………………………………………. 26 4.2 Frame Analysis Results…………………………………………………………. 29 CHAPTER V. DISCUSSION…………………………………………………………….… 33 5.0 Introduction…………..…………………………………………………………. 33 5.1 Interpretation of Tones………………………………………………………….. 33 viii 5.2 The Interpretation of the Generic Frames………………………………………. 36 5.3 Limitations of the Study.......……………………………………………………. 43 5.4 Conclusion…………...…………………………………………………………. 44 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………… 48 APPENDIX A. CODING INSTRUCTIONS………………….…………………….……… 59 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 Percentage of tones used among the media in African countries .............................. 26 2 Percentage of tones used among the media in China, US and UK ............................ 28 x LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 Explanation of the news articles mined and coded .................................................... 20 2 Explanation of inter-coder reliability on five generic frames and four tones ............ 25 6 Chi-square results of the tone variations among African Countries .......................... 27 7 Chi-square results of the tone variations among China, US, and UK ........................ 28 8 Descriptive statistics of the media frames adopted by African countries .................. 29 6 Descriptive statistics of the media frames adopted by China, US and UK ................ 31 1 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1.0 Background of the Study For several decades, media have been an important source of information for masses around the globe. Particularly in the field of development communication and social empowerment, and political communication, media play a huge role in promoting cultural diversity, bridging digital divide, promoting human social welfare, bringing to light community- oriented participatory initiatives, and facilitating fight for social justice (Melkote & Steeves, 2015). When the audience largely rely on media as their main source of information, news coverage is likely to shape the public opinion on various political issues (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976). Determining the content of what is to be disseminated to the audience and what is to be left out plays a huge role in determining how societies perceive or adopt new ideas. Media framing enhances audience processes where news information disseminated to the audiences enables them to construct meaning using their preexisting cognitive representations (Graber, 1988). Another way that media play a role in persuading the audiences is by disseminating news content with a bias. For instance, news can be covered with a positive tone, negative tone, or a neutral tone towards a topic of discussion with an intention of persuading the audience in a certain way. For example, Melkote (2003) examined how media covered the USA-Iraq war and found that the New York Times covered weapon of mass destruction that Iraq was perceived to be in possession negatively even though no one was certain if Iraq really possessed these weapons. 2 1.1 Scramble for Africa It was during the 19th century that the first scramble for Africa led by the European powers emerged. This scramble was instigated by among other factors: the British, Germany and French military rivalry, need for new cotton supply sources due to the American civil wars, and “new markets as a result of the European economic depression” (Mamdani, 1996). Centuries before and during colonization, close to 20 million slaves were bought and exported from Africa (Nunn 2008) to several parts of the world. Towards the end of slave