News Report:
China Daily: Trump speaks with Putin on Ukraine ceasefire proposal
Publication Histories and Production Context
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China Daily
Founded in 1981, China Daily is one of the mainstream official English-language newspapers in China, affiliated with the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. As a state-funded publication, the perspective of its editorial content is often regarded as the attitude of the Chinese government’s foreign policy. In addition, China Daily also has a unique attribute of external propaganda. Its publications and online platforms have become one of the channels for international perspectives on China since its inception, and its content output also has the characteristics of shaping a good image of China (Brady, 2015). Therefore, the use of neutral, gentle and concise language to present China’s global image and defend the policies released by China’s official authorities has become China Daily’s main narrative strategy.
China Daily is not dependent on revenue generated by advertising and subscriptions, which is different from other commercial and independent media. According to Hartig (2017), the editorial team does not need to consider the pressure generated by market drivers to maintain its own stable and consistent tone, which is strongly related to the direct funding and editorial opinions obtained from government departments.
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The Conversation
The Conversation was founded in Australia in 2011 as a non-profit independent media platform. It has now established other regional versions including the US version, the UK version and operates globally (Sweet, 2013). As a digital-born news service that focuses on disseminating news reports from a professional perspective, its funding mostly comes from government research funds, university support and philanthropic support. Therefore, even if it maintains the current status of not accepting advertising, it still does not need to consider any commercial pressure.
According to Riedlinger et al. (2021), as a channel for academics to face the public directly, The Conversation’s editorial content is written by experts in various fields and supplemented by content support provided by professional journalists. As a platform that provides expert perspectives for non-breaking news, it not only makes professional research content easier to understand, but also ensures the transparency and credibility of news.
Target User Groups and Audience Demographics
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China Daily
Although China Daily is a mainstream news platform in China, its main readership is international. According to its official website, China Daily aims to provide content on China-related issues to the global elite and decision-makers, including diplomats, global investors, and academics and experts (China Daily: About Us, n.d.). Although China Daily has not released additional user analysis, its rigorous, formal, diplomatic language style can still be inferred that its target group is older and well-educated. In addition, the frequent appearance of its publications in international hotels, international flights, and government events is also one of the ways to construct its readership profile. However, as a media that conveys the will of the state, China Daily’s cautious interaction with readers has prevented it from having a considerable level of engagement, thus reducing the possibility of non-professional readers as its target audience to a certain extent.
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The Conversation
90% of its audience has a bachelor’s degree and has a certain influence, which has always been the audience analysis data that The Conversation is proud of. According to the official website, its readership is diverse and covers professionals in many fields. It is worth noting that while having a gender balance, 40% of readers are under 45 years old. This not only reflects that The Conversation has a broad and diverse audience, but also reflects its value and role as a professional and academic platform (The Conversation, 2024). In contrast to China Daily, The Conversation focuses on general (non-academic) readers who actively seek in-depth content presentation. Additionally, its professionally edited content not only continues to meet the requirements of knowledge seekers for high-quality reporting, but also often becomes a reliable source for teaching, media citations or policy research.
Comparative Analysis
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Writing and Content Production
First of all, China Daily’s report on the incident was very brief and unsigned, indicating that the author was an insider. The report consisted of only a few sentences, including a brief quote from a White House official on social media. The lack of background description or additional analysis made the report only have news facts, which was rigorous and neutral, but also one-sided and superficial. In addition, the article omitted the description of motivations and influences, which made the news lack weight, lacked narrative structure and sources, and not meet the requirements of the current news for a comprehensive account of the incident. According to Levi et al. (2020), omitting sources or background to some extent weakened public trust and limited the information value created by the report because it could not help readers verify facts or understand meaning.
The Conversation’s report on this incident provided a richer background description, written by a well-known international relations scholar. The author’s personal information and affiliation are clearly displayed on the right, endorsing the credibility and authenticity of the article. In the report, the current situation in Russia and Ukraine and their respective strategic nature are clearly covered, and the US political considerations on both sides of the war are also analysed. The highlight of this report is that it combines the transparency of journalistic reporting with academic rigour. The author uses direct and easy-to-understand language as well as embedded literature and citations to more clearly explain this complex international issue to the audience (Hennessey et al., 2014).
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Online and Technical Delivery
From the perspective of digital presentation, the two reports present different levels of technical complexity and differentiated user interaction design. China Daily adopts a pure text online presentation. Multimedia, hyperlinks and other interactive elements are not selected by the editors as a means to enhance the reading experience of readers. Although the page layout is clear and simple, the lack of options such as tags, social media sharing and comments from the perspective of accessibility and discoverability hinders interaction with the audience to a certain extent. According to Zhang and Shaw (2024), the function of official platforms such as China Daily has always been to effectively disseminate official news rather than to engage in additional in-depth interaction with their audience.
In contrast, The Conversation’s presentation well meets the audience’s requirements for modern digital news practices. First, the text layout is concise and has a clear structure. The embedded images are not only in line with the content of the article but also have clear and complete source descriptions. According to Martin and Murrell (2021), the use of multiple media elements in news reports can not only add creativity to the report, but also drive network traffic and establish a positive interaction with the audience. Therefore, this article not only includes hyperlinks to related reports and the author’s previous works to enhance transparency, but also sets up tags such as “Ukraine Conflict” and “Donald Trump” to assist readers in further navigation. In addition, there is a sharing button in the page settings so that readers can share the report through channels such as Twitter (X), Facebook, LinkedIn and email for wider distribution. The technical experience that The Conversation brings to the audience is complete and in line with the current news reading habits of readers of all ages. While providing convenience and speed to the audience, it also satisfies the guarantee of its own professionalism and educational significance.
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Interactivity, User Engagement and Transparency
How to achieve the goal of attracting audiences while ensuring news transparency is the common focus of current news platforms. In this regard, China Daily and The Conversation have taken different actions. In the report page of China Daily, not only is there no author introduction and comment area, but there is also no embedded social media sharing method. This is undoubtedly a deliberate rejection of any opportunity to interact with readers. Therefore, readers will inevitably question the authenticity of the news without information transparency. Looking at other reports of China Daily, this top-down communication method similar to that of a centralised government is prevalent. However, although the closed news presentation is in line with its official operation of the public opinion control mechanism, it greatly eliminates the trust and engagement of users (Brady, 2015).
As an organisation that attaches great importance to transparency and engagement, each article of The Conversation has a clear and detailed author introduction, which is usually linked to its personal profile page in the form of a hyperlink, allowing readers to freely jump to the author’s other research and articles. In addition, the clear setting of the comment area builds a communication bridge between readers and authors. Although readers’ comments will be reviewed and published based on clear community guidelines, this also ensures the quality of public discussion and cultivates audience loyalty. Moreover, the platform’s labelling of funding sources not only practices its commitment to journalistic ethics, but also guarantees readers’ right to know, becoming one of the cornerstones of high interactivity (Purwatiningsih et al., 2024).
Reference List:
Brady, A.-M. (2015). China’s Foreign Propaganda Machine. Journal of Democracy, 26(4), 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2015.0056
China Daily: about us. (n.d.). Www.chinadaily.com.cn; China Daily. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/static/aboutchinadaily.html
Hartig, F. (2017). China Daily – Beijing’s global voice? In China’s Media Go Global (pp. 122–140). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315619668-8/china-daily-beijing-global-voice-falk-hartig
Hennessey, P., Lippert, B., & Uriniuk, J. (2014). Perception and credibility of embedded journalism during the iraq war. https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:166223020
Levi, E., Mor, G., Shenhav, S., & Sheafer, T. (2020). CompRes: A Dataset for Narrative Structure in News. ArXiv (Cornell University). https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2007.04874
Martin, F., & Murrell, C. (2021). Negotiating the Conversation: How Journalists Learn to Interact with Audiences Online. Journalism Practice, 15(6), 839–859. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1907211
Purwatiningsih, S., Lubis, M., & Wiediastuti, W. (2024). The impact of credibility of the news source DETIK.COM on the confidence of tama jagakarsa students’ university in the accuracy of news reports. International Journal of Social Science and Human Research, 07(02), 1099–1110. https://doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v7-i02-28
Riedlinger, M., Fleerackers, A., Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Guenther, L., Joubert, M., & Osman, K. (2021). THE CONVERSATION, TEN YEARS ON: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF A UNIQUE SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING INITIATIVE. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12130
Sweet, M. (2013). Australia exports an academic-powered news website to the UK. BMJ, 346(mar28 6), f2070–f2070. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f2070
The Conversation. (2024). Our Audience. Theconversation.com. https://theconversation.com/au/audience
Zardo, P., Barnett, A. G., Suzor, N., & Cahill, T. (2018). Does engagement predict research use? An analysis of The Conversation Annual Survey 2016. PLOS ONE, 13(2), e0192290. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192290
Zhang, X., & Shaw, G. (2024). Xi–Biden Summit coverage: Chinese media frames for global and domestic readers. Global Media and China. https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364241310554
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