The newsworthiness in the coverage of the “Belt and Road” Initiative :a comparative analysis of Chinese party newspaper and industry newspaper

The newsworthiness in the coverage of the “Belt and Road” Initiative :a comparative analysis of Chinese party newspaper and industry newspaper | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article The newsworthiness in the coverage of the “Belt and Road” Initiative :a comparative analysis of Chinese party newspaper and industry newspaper Cunxin Han, Juan He This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7621200/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 10 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract This paper compares how newsworthiness is constructed in reporting on the “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI) by a party newspaper and an industry newspaper in China. Using corpus linguistic methods and a discursive news values analysis framework (DNVA), it examines news values through POS tags, key semantic tags, and collocations in two news outlets: People’s Daily and International Business Daily . Despite the similarities in constructing Positivity, Proximity and Superlativeness in headlines, highlighting “China opportunity” and economic benefits, notable discrepancies are observed in constructing Impact and Timelinesss, particularly Eliteness, which is far more constructed in PD through elite figures. While PD constructs more Positivity and Impact highlighting the prosperity and positive impact of BRI on both China and other countries, IBD constructs more Superlativeness and Timeliness emphasizing the vitality and resilience in the BRI trade in the body report. This study reveals that the patterns in constructing newsworthiness differ significantly between the party newspaper and the industry newspaper, as they aim to meet the expectations of their distinct target audiences. Humanities/Cultural and media studies Social science/Cultural and media studies Humanities/Language and linguistics Social science/Language and linguistics Social science/Politics and international relations Corpus-assisted discourse analysis Discursive news values analysis (DNVA) BRI Chinese main stream media Figures Figure 1 Introduction The Belt and Road Initiative (hereafter, BRI), proposed by China in 2013, stands for the “Silk Road Economic Belt”and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, aiming to enhance global cooperation through infrastructure connectivity, trade and investment collaboration, and cultural exchanges, with a focus on developing countries. The initiative promotes policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and closer people-to-people ties to foster shared development. The BRI has attracted significant media attention due to its massive scale, global impact, and potential for infrastructure development and economic cooperation. Much research has been conducted on media representation of BRI in the main stream media of countries including the United States, Australia, Japan, as well as nations along the BRI route, such as Russia, Pakistan, Malaysia ( An and Liang, 2018 ; Nie, 2019 ; Kuteleva and Vasiliev, 2020 ;Wu and Wang, 2021 ).These studies employ multiple analytical approaches, such as frame analysis, agenda-setting, content analysis, corpus analysis, aiming to reveal the attitudes, positions, and perceptions of national media/governments toward the BRI. And some research just focused on Chinese media, such as People’s Daily (Overseas Edition), China Daily. They explore the reporting framework and attitude resources in the reports (Wang and Du, 2019 ; Liu and Zhang, 2020 ). A contrastive perspective is found prominent and contrast was made at various levels. Intercultural contrastive studies were conducted between eastern media and western media, between Chinese media and other foreign media such as American media, British media, Japanese media, between American media and British media, between Pakistan media and Indian media (Zhang and Wu,2017; Yang and Van Gorp, 2023 ; Xie,2023; Chu etc.,2025). Intra-cultural contrastive studies were carried out between media outlets within Hongkong and China. For instance, Ren and Zhou ( 2023 ) studied the discourse strategies of three mainstream media, including People’s Daily (Overseas Edition), China Daily and Xinhua News Agency English website , in their BRI foreign coverage. Hou and Cai ( 2018 ) studied the reporting frameworks of three mainstream newspapers in Hong Kong on the BRI. To sum, extensive research has been undergone on the news reporting on the BRI in the mainstream media of countries from multiple perspectives. These studies have yielded significant findings that will help us understand the attitudes of various nations toward the BRI as well as their reporting characteristics. However, we observe that compared to cross-cultural contrastive studies, intra-cultural contrastive research remains relatively scarce, particularly comparing two Chinese media featuring different target audience. Furthermore, while existing research perspectives are diverse, studies on the BRI from the perspective of Discursive News Value Analysis (DNVA) remain relatively uncommon. This article analyzes and compares the news values constructed in the news reporting from two Chinese mainstream media, i.e. People’s Daily (PD) and International Business Daily (IBD)around the BRI, revealing how the same event has been discursively represented in different ways, uncovering their discrepancies in news values constructed on the BRI and how the positioning of newspapers affects the discursive representation of the BRI between the two media outlets.Adopting corpus linguistic methods and the discursive news values analysis (DNVA) framework, this study examines news values not only in headlines but also in the body part through POS tags, key semantic tags and collocation analysis in the two newspapers.This study aims to answer the following three questions. What news values are discursively construed in the reporting on the BRI in PD and IBD How are these news values typically constructed by PD and IBD in the reporting on the BRI? Why are these news values constructed by PD and IBD in the reporting on the BRI? Exploring these questions will help us understand if some news values are more constructed on a particular topic and if different types of Chinese mainstream media, for instance, the politically oriented, comprehensive party newspaper PD and market-oriented specialized industry newspaper, IBD,construct distinct news values concerning the same topic of the BRI.This study also reveals the similarities and differences in discourse strategies and linguistic devices between the two media outlets in representing the BRI, thereby offering an insight into how the media positioning impacts the construction of newsworthiness and discursive representation of the social event. Media coverage of the BRI Much attention has been paid to the media representation of the BRI in mainstream media outlets worldwide.The Chinese mainstream media, including People’s Daily and China Daily , reported on the BRI positively. Much of these research focused on the reporting framework, national image, and discourse strategies(Wang and Mao,2018; Wang and Du,2019;Ren and Zhou,2023). Similarly, the media of countries along the BRI route,such as Russia, Malaysia, Pakistan, reported the BRI in a mostly positive manner (Shi and Jin, 2021 ;Wu and Wang,2021). For instance, Kuteleva and Vasiliev ( 2020 ) found that Russian newspapers support the official narrative of Sino-Russian relations and follow trends rather than create them. Unlike the basically positive tone in the coverage in the countries along the BRI route, most non-BRI developed countries adopt a negative and skeptical attitude (An and Liang, 2018 ;Wang, 2018 ). For instance, research shows that the media framework in The Wall Street Journal was predominantly negative, with reporting tones leaning toward “doubt” and “concern”(Zhou and Kang, 2016 ). Mainstream media in Germany and Australia share a very similar tendency to report on the BRI as American media, emphasizing “criticism”, “conflict” and “threat”(Sun and Jiang, 2017 ; Zou, 2023 ). The intercultural differences in the reporting of the BRI were also explored (Zhang and Yi ,2022; Chu etc.,2025 ). These studies reveal that the reporting of the BRI in each country was consistent with their respective national interests and foreign policies.For instance, China Daily has attempted to emphasize the initiative’s positive attributes and represented China as a peace-loving nation, an international cooperator, and an emerging global economic and responsible power. In Financial Times , China is portrayed mostly as an authoritarian state, a militant and obstructive force, and a geopolitical threat (Zhang and Wu, 2017 ). Chinese media emphasized positive themes like “development” “mutual benefit” and “cooperation”, reflecting the core values and objectives of the BRI. In contrast, American media tended to highlight negative aspects such as “security” “risks” and “challenges” adopting a critical or even defamatory stance (Li and Wu, 2024 ). It finds that the majority of comparative studies have been conducted cross-culturally, with little attention given to the comparison of two Chinese media.This study aims to compare two Chinese mainstream media, one party newspaper and one industry newspaper, aiming to help us understand how the different positioning of newspapers impact their reporting on the BRI in terms of newsworthiness. News values and a discursive approach to news values “News values” has long been a crucial concept in journalism studies and explored from various perspectives. From a material perspective, news values are defined as “the inherent qualities of an event” (Harcup and O’neill, 2017), which exist inde- pendently of journalists. From social and cognitive perspectives, they are regarded as professional competence and cognition of journalists—the criteria employed by journalists to select, order, and prioritize the collection and production of news (Richardson, 2007 : 91).Values have cognitive ,social and discursive aspects (Van Dijk, 1998). A discursive approach to the study of news values, Discursive News Value Analysis (DNVA), was proposed to analyse how the news values are communicated and negotiated through discourse (Bednarek and Caple 2012 ; Caple and Bednarek 2013 ). This approach not only identified 11 types of news value—such as Negativity, Timeliness, Proximity, and Eliteness—but also established corresponding linguistic and visual resource catalogs, thereby constructing a multimodal discourse analysis framework for news value evaluation (Bednarek and Caple, 2017 ). The DNVA framework can be used to study how the newsworthiness of specific events is constructed in published news reports, demonstrating the media’s intention to attract an audience by presenting a story that is newsworthy to them (Bednarek and Caple, 2012 ).The present study adopts the analysis framework of DNVA with an emphasis on linguistic devices as news reports are presented only in written texts in our data-set. Much attention has been paid to the media representation of social events or social figures from the perspective of DNVA recently, including maritime security, COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese tennis player Li Na, Confucius ( Zhang and Caple, 2021 , Yu and Liu, 2023 ; Chen and Liu, 2023 , 2024 ). These studies employed corpus linguistic methods exclusively including concordance analysis, collocation, and keyword analysis. However, the method of POS tags, key semantic tags, especially Chinese semantic tags, was underused, likely because of the lack of readily available corpus software that can handle the Chinese language. Thus, this study uses POS tags analysis and key semantic tags analysis via Wmatrix to uncover the differences in news values constructed in the news reports on the BRI in two Chinese mainstream newspapers, i.e. PD and IBD. It will definitely offer methodological insights for Chinese comparative DNVA studies by means of POS tags and key semantic tags. Data and Methods Data. This study intends to reveal the differences in news values constructed in two Chinese media outlets surrounding the topic of the BRI and investigate the impact of media positioning on news values. Two Chinese main stream media, i.e. PD and IBD were selected for the present study in light of their authority and big circularity in China.The PD is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the largest newspaper in China. The viewpoints and attitudes in its reports represent the mainstream ideology of China. The IBD is a national-level newspaper sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China and distributed by the International Business News Agency, a direct affiliate of the Ministry. It is one of the most widely circulated newspapers in China. Both are national official newspapers, yet they emphasize different themes and serve different functions. The search term“一带一路” (BRI) was used as the keyword to retrieve one year’s news reports of 2023 from the online Database of Chinese Key Newspapers (中国重要报纸全文数据库)in that the year of 2023 marks the 10th Anniversary of the launch of the “Belt and Road” initiative, which is of symbolic significance. This milestone will trigger concentrated reviews and summary reports by domestic and foreign media. Anniversary events (such as summit forums) generate a large number of news reports, ensuring an adequate research sample. The extracted news reports are grouped into two separate corpora: the People's Daily BRI News Reporting Corpus (hereafter,PD Corpus) and the International Business Daily BRI News Reporting Corpus (hereafter, IBD Corpus). The statistic information of the two corpora are presented as follows (Table 1) . Methods. Corpus linguistic methods are combined in this DNVA study to examine the news values construed in: (1) headlines which provide “the ultimate summary or abstract of a news story ”(Bell 1991 : 186); (2) body of the reports concerning “一带一路”(BRI); (3) collocations of the term“一带一路” (BRI). On these bases, we also analyzed the ways through which news values are constructed. The analysis comprises the following steps listed below. Primarily, the news values constructed in headlines are identified manually by referring to the definitions of 10 news values and their construction strategies illustrated in Appendix 1 (Bednarek et al., 2021 :707). The analysis will be complemented by the POS tag analysis. The software Excel is used to record the coding process and counting the frequencies of news values for each headline. Secondly, semantic tags appear the most insightful for providing an overview of newsworthiness (Potts et al.,2015:169). A web-based tool Wmatrix,which is a software tool for corpus analysis and comparison(Rayson, 2008 ), is used to generate the list of key semantic tags for each corpus by comparing reciprocally. The main statistic employed in this comparison is log likelihood (LL).LL ratio is used for ranking keyness and identifying statistically significant collocates by measuring the confidence that results are not due to chance (Rayson et al., 2004 ). The LL cut-off, and frequency cut-off are set at 6.63 and 5. Concordance analysis is followed to examine the newsworthiness pointed by these words and semantic domains. In the meanwhile, the discourse strategies and linguistic devices will be analyzed. Thirdly, collocation analysis may be useful for identifying news values established in the co-text of topic-associated words (Potts et al.,2015:169). To find out, we undertook a collocation analysis of the key term “一带一路”(BRI)using AntConc(Anthony, 2024 ). The list of collocates are generated using MI3 value,and a minimum collocation frequency of 3 within the span of +/-5. Lastly,we will discuss the social structures(political system, press censorship, media positioning and function)that influence the newsworthiness constructed by PD and IBD surrounding “一带一路”(BRI)for the two news media outlets are powerfully dominated by Chinese politics. Table 1 The corpora in studying the reports on the BRI Corpus Number of news reports Words PD Corpus 393 626,850 IBD Corpus 280 294,133 First, all the newspapers in China are run under the guidance of the Chinese government and censored by the governmental publicity department. Therefore, the news reporting is greatly dominated by China’s political structure and serves as the mouthpiece of the Chinese government (Shirk, 2011 ). Second, metropolis newspaper, communist party newspaper and specialized industry newspapers are ranked as the three major types of newspapers in China (Tong and Chen, 2014 :61). PD is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), whose core mission is to publicize the party’s theories, guidelines, and policies, with a distinct political orientation, while IBD, an industry newspaper under the administration of the Ministry of Commerce, specializes in economic and trade affairs, serving China’s opening-up and international trade. Third, PD targets Party members, officials, and the general public, highlighting national development achievements, and governance cases, while IBD primarily serves trade departments, enterprises, and research institutions, concentrates on economic actors, for instance, enterprises, supply chains, focusing on international rules, market access, and investment environments. Thus, the analytical approach that uses political structure to explain news values and their modes of discourse construction is logically consistent and theoretically robust. Although this study focuses on revealing the construction of news values in two Chinese news media outlets, it can offer further insights into how newspapers position their audiences and affiliate with them (Caple etc., 2020). Findings and analysis This part initially presents news values in headlines with an emphasis on the three prominent shared news values: Positivity, Proximity, and Superlativeness. It then proceeds with semantic tags analysis to uncover the distinct key semantic domains wherein news values are established. Finally, collocation analysis reveals the newsworthiness constructed around the key term “一带一路”(BRI). Manual analysis of headlines In a typical print or online news story, the headline is treated as the main “hook” for the reader(Molek-Kozakowska, 2013 ). As Barnhurst and Nerone ( 2001 :198) point out, headlines no longer function as titles or labels directing readers to the stories on the page: rather, they have become a “pointed summary of the news”, carrying “deeply embedded codes of news values and cultural values… ranging from the unusual and the timely to the powerful and the moral”. In this study, we analyzed the news values in the headlines including the sub-headlines and note down the occurrences of news values in an MS Excel spreed sheet. The analysis shows that four news values, i.e. Negativity, Consonance, Unexpectedness and Personalization occurred less than 6 times. Due to the rare occurrences of the four news values, they will not be discussed in below. Considering that the news reports of the two media are not equal in number, which renders the two corpora uneven in word counts(Table 1 ), the analysis of this study is based on percentages instead of the total numbers(Figure 1 ). As can be seen in Fig. 1 , both media constructed similar percentage of Positivity, Proximity and Superlativeness, while notable discrepancies are also found in the newsworthiness of Impact, Timeliness, particularly Eliteness, which in PD is nearly 8 times that of IBD. Positivity and Proximity are the two most prominent values constructed in both media, particularly Positivity, accounting for 92.6% in PD and 97.1% in IBD. Positivity, Proximity and Superlativeness Positivity is the first dominant news value constructed in both media since Chinese news reporting is greatly dominated by the official tones and the Chinese government (Chen and Liu, 2024 :9). Additionally, PD and IBD are mainstream Chinese news media administered by the Central Committee of the CPC and the Ministry of Commerce respectively,which serve as the mouth piece of Chinese government and have the highest level of censorship. The newsworthiness of Positivity in portraying China’s BRI fits the positive reporting advocated by the Chinese government. Using Wmatrix, we generated a list of positive POS tags among the top 100 frequent words in the headlines with the frequency displayed in the brackets(Table 2 ). Note that some words listed below are neutral in isolation but take on a positive coloring in collocation with other words in the context, such as, 新(new), 高(high), 绿(green), 大(large), 共(together), 更 (more), 共同体( community), 建设(construction), 发展(develop). For example, Example 1 奋跃而上书写新的辉煌历史篇章 (Striving forward with vigor to write a new glorious chapter in history 2023-01-21, PD) Table 2 Positive POS tags in PD and IBD Headlines positive POS tags PD IBD NOUN 发展/development (111), 合作/cooperation (83), 共建/joint construction (49), 峰会/summit (27), 机遇/opportunity (18), 共同体/community(17), construction/建设 (16), prosperity/繁荣(15), achievement/成果(14), assist/助力(12) 合作/cooperation (53), 投资/ investment(15), 共建/joint contribution (14), 发展/development (13), 机遇/opportunity (11)活力/vitality, (8)韧性/resilience(6), 伙伴/partner(5), 建设/construction (5) ADJ 新/new (63), 高/high (58), 美好/beautiful(17), 热烈/lively(13) 新/new (51), 高/high (14), 大/great(6), 绿色/green(6) VERB 推动/promote (54), 发展/develop (40), 促进/promote(29), 共建/co-build (26), 携手/collaborate (21), 合作/cooperate (20), 深化/deepen (18), 推进/advance(16), 赢/win (14) 合作/cooperate (13), 携手/collaborate (13), 发展/develop (12), 共建/co-build (10), 推动/promote (9), 增长/grow(8), 深化/deepen , (8)前行/moving forward(7), 共享/share(6), 赢/win (6), 促/facilitate(4) ADV 共/together (39), 更/more(30), 共同/jointly(27) 共/together (29), 深/deeply(6) Note: Bold-type words are shared by both media Table 2 shows both media tend to use more nouns and verbs to construct the newsworthiness of Positivity than adjectives and adverbs. Some nouns and verbs, such as development, cooperation, joint construction, opportunity, construction, promote, develop, co-build, collaborate, deepen, win, are frequently used in both media.These words demonstrate “China’s commitment to dialogue, consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits, as well as its pursuit of win-win cooperation. They also highlight the Chinese government’s aspiration to promote international consensus on the BRI through investment and infrastructure development” (Ren and Zhou, 2023 :9). For example, Example 2 促进贸易发展, 推动产业合作 (Promote trade development and advance industrial cooperation 2023-10-26,PD) Example 3 中巴经济走廊建设取得丰硕成果—增添发展动力, 促进互利共赢 (The construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has yielded fruitful results—adding momentum to development and promoting mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. 2023-11-01,PD) The above examples focus on “development” and “construction”, indicating that China has positioned “Belt and Road” as a global development initiative rather than a geopolitical tool. In addition, the government of China would like to emphasize that development gains are based on an equal partnership. For example, Example 4 “一带一路” 经贸合作取得新成效 (New Achievements in “Belt and Road” Economic and Trade Cooperation 2023-07-20,IBD) Example 5 丝路贯通古今, 中阿携手向未来 (The Silk Road Connects Past and Present, China and Arab Countries Collaborate for the Future 2023-07-19,IBD) By emphasizing “cooperation” and “collaboration”, the Chinese government wants to highlight the “win-win cooperation” model, reject unilateralism, and advocate equal and mutually beneficial partnerships. Furthermore, by shaping the narrative of “opportunity” and “win-win”, China wants to tell the world that “Belt and Road” is not a zero-sum game, but an open and inclusive economic cooperation platform. At last, China wishes to deepen cooperation with countries along the BRI and integration across multiple fields through the use of words “deepen” “promote” as in the following examples. Example 6 深化互联互通, 促进共同发展 (Deepen connectivity and promote common development 2023-11-24,PD) A discrepancy found in the construction of Positivity between PD and IBD is that PD incorporates more national ideology, like “人类命运共同体(a community with a shared future for mankind)” into the reporting. Example 7 建设开放、活力、强韧、和平的亚太共同体 (Building an open, dynamic, resilient, and peaceful Asia-Pacific community 2023-11-19,PD) All the countries participated in the BRI are described as a community with a shared future in the reporting of PD. This awareness of promoting national policies is much more pronounced in the PD ’ s coverage compared to that of the IBD. This discrepancy is most likely attributable to the distinct media attributes of these two outlets. As the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the CPC, the PD prioritizes disseminating national governance philosophies. Top-level designs like the “人类命运共同体”(a community with a shared future for mankind)naturally require repeated dissemination through the highest-tier media platforms. By contrast, the focus of IBD is on interpreting international trade and investment policies. Another divergence observed in constructing Positivity is that PD emphasized “prosperity”, whereas IBD focused on “resilience” with regard to economy and trade. The difference in target audiences may explain this discrepancy. The primary readership of PD consists of party and government officials. Headlines serve the function of political mobilization, where using emotionally charged words like “prosperity” can instantly evoke their sense of national pride. In contrast, the readers of IBD are business people, and terms like “resilience” directly address their core concern of risk management requirements. The second dominant newsworthiness constructed in both media is Proximity, whose percentage is found much higher in IBD (77.5%) than PD (64.8%),which may be explained by the fact that IBD primarily serves business decision-making which evokes a more urgent need for proximity. The percentages of Superlativeness are very close in PD (23.9%) and IBD (23.2%), which may imply that Superlativeness is a common news value constructed in Chinese main stream media or reporting on vital political events. Superlativeness is constructed through references to the dual growth in both domestic and foreign trade and investment in PD. Quantifiers referring to the growth rate construct Superlativeness in example 8 . Example 8 前4月我国对外非金融类直接投资同比增长26.6% (China's non-financial outbound direct investment grew by 26.6% year-on-year in the first four months. 2023-05-27,PD) Superlativeness are often constructed by means of intensifiers such as “high”, “tremendous” to emphasize the significance of China’s development for the world, for instance, providing development opportunities (Example 9 ). Particularly, partner countries along the BRI stand to benefit from China’s development (Example 10 ). Example 9 高质量发展的中国为世界带来更大机遇 (China’s high-quality development brings greater opportunities to the world 2023-03-07,PD) Example 10 老中互利合作为两国人民带来巨大福祉 (The mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Laos has brought tremendous benefits to the peoples of both countries. 2023-04-25,PD) More examples show that PD uses qualifiers to stress the high-quality development in China in order to unite the people’s hearts, build consensus, and contribute to the national rejuvenation (Example 11 ). Example 11 凝心聚力, 形成共同致力民族复兴的强大力量 (Unite our hearts and minds to forge a powerful force jointly dedicated to national rejuvenation 2023-05-12, PD) Besides emphasizing the high-quality development of the BRI trade, Superlativeness constructed in IBD tends to focus more on micro-aspects instead of the grand narratives of “China Opportunity” in PD,which is also evidenced by the semantic tag analysis in the next section. More specifically, it is often constructed to summarize the mutual benefits and development that the BRI brought to China and the countries along the BRI route in the past decade (Example 12 ), analyzing the present situation of this policy (Example 13 ). Example 12 借力一带一路东风, 小蘑菇走俏大市场 (Riding the wind of the BRI, small mushrooms become popular in big markets.2023-03-28, IBD) Example 13 中国与一带一路贸易展现强劲韧性 (China and the Belt and Road trade demonstrate strong resilience 2023-04-18,IBD) Quantifiers such as “20 trillion” “775(trains)” and qualifiers such as “big” “strong” “majestic” are often used to construct Superlativeness showing the massive scale of trade and the robust vitality and momentum of the BRI trade (Example 14 ). Example 14 上半年外贸规模历史同期首次突破20万亿元大关 (In the first half of the year, the scale of foreign trade exceeded the 20 trillion yuan mark for the first time in history during the same period. 2023-07-14,IBD) Eliteness,Timeliness and Impact A notable contrast is found in constructing the newsworthiness of Eliteness between PD and IBD. In constructing Eliteness, “the event is discursively constructed as high status or fame(including but not limited to people, countries or institutions involved)”(Caple, etc., 2020:6). The data shows that Eliteness in PD headlines are more constructed by elite figures instead of elite institutions or organizations. The BRI carries strong policy attributes, with mainstream discourse primarily coming from government entities, experts and scholars, placing significant emphasis on the voices of political leaders (Wang and Du, 2019 :74). Notably, the Chinese President Xi Jinping appears the most frequently (43%) with a contrast of leaders of other countries or organizations (19.3%), such as Prime Minister of Vietnam, Prime Minister of Cambodia, BRICS leaders (Example 15 – 16 ). Example 15 推动构建高水平中非命运共同体-习近平主席向第36届非洲联盟峰会致贺电引发非洲各界热烈反响 (Promoting the building of a high-level China-Africa community with a shared future–President Xi Jinping’s congratulatory message to the 36th African Union Summit has aroused warm response from all sectors in Africa 2023-02-20,PD) Example 16 习近平会见越南总理范明政 (Xi Jinping meets with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh 2023-06-28, PD) By contrast, only 10 cases of Eliteness are found in the IBD headlines,which are mainly construed in elite organizations such as Dagong Global Credit Rating Co.Ltd, think tank,elite institutions such as China and the Eurasian Economic Union,Ministry of Commerce,elite meetings such as the China Export Commodities Fair, Canton Fair, Meteorological Summit Forum.The contrast in constructing Eliteness may attribute to the different political positioning between PD and IBD. The primary mission of PD is to promote national policies, showcasing the country’s image, and conveying official voices. Including national leaders in headlines is the most effective way to attract attention and highlight the political significance and importance of events,while IBD prioritizes providing business services and promoting economic and trade cooperation. It is assumed that IBD will construct more Timeliness to provide the up-to-date economic and financial information since it’s a market-oriented economic newspaper. Unexpectedly, PD demonstrated greater Timeliness than IBD.This discrepancy is closely related to the construction of Eliteness since the activities and events that Chinese political elites engaged in will be reported very quickly, which contributes to the construction of Timeliness. (Example 17 .) By contrast, Timeliness is constructed mainly through statistic reports in IBD headlines.(Example 18.) Example 17 习近平主席新年贺词引发国际人士热议 (President Xi Jinping’s New Year address has sparked heated discussion among international Figs. 2023- 01 -03,PD) Example 18.1- 2 月中国对外非金融类直接投资1360.4亿元 (China’s non-financial outward direct investment reached 136.04 billion yuan from January to February. 2023-03-28,IBD The news value of Impact is significantly more constructed in IBD (47.1%) than in PD (22.9%).The following two examples illustrate that China’s economic development has provided significant momentum for the stabilization and recovery of the global economy, offering greater development opportunities to the world. The BRI has infused vitality into the development and prosperity of partner countries.(Example 19 &20) Example 19 为世界经济企稳复苏提供强大动能—中外专家看好中国经济发展 (Providing strong momentum for the stabilization and recovery of the world economy —Chinese and foreign experts optimistic about China's economic development 2023-01-30, PD) Example 20 “一带一路” 为共建国家发展繁荣注入动力 (The “Belt and Road” initiative injects momentum into the development and prosperity of partner countries. 2023-06-26, PD) Semantic tags analysis of reporting In order to provide an overview of newsworthiness in such a large data-set as in this research, it is impossible to manage it manually as we did in the previous section. Computer-based method is then needed to deal with such a large amount of data. Key semantic tags are the most insightful for sketching out the newsworthiness (Potts, et al., 2015 ). A specialized web-based tool Wmatrix for corpus analysis and comparison is used to generate a list of key semantic tags by comparing the two corpora reciprocally (Rayson, 2008 ). The results of the top five key semantic tags in PD are presented in Table 3 , indicating that these five semantic fields appeared with unusually high frequency. O1 represents the observed frequency of this semantic field in PD corpus, O2 represents its observed frequency in the IBD corpus, %1 and %2 values indicate the relative frequency of this semantic field in the PD corpus and IBD corpus respectively, and ་ indicates that this semantic field appears more frequently in PD than in IBD. LL is the log-likelihood value, where a higher value indicates that this semantic field occurs more frequently in PD compared to IBD. Table 3 Key semantic tags in the PD Corpus No. Semantic tag In PD Corpus In reference IBD Corpus Log likelihood O1 %1 O2 %2 1 The universe 2793 0.36 484 0.13 + 498.91 2 Green issues 948 0.12 85 0.02 + 331.31 3 Giving 7294 0.94 2348 0.65 + 253.81 4 Calm 1157 0.15 183 0.05 + 234.77 5 Change 15853 2.04 5850 1.62 + 234.67 The dominant items tagged “The universe” are 世界(world)and its variant全世界(all over the world). Similar to the findings in the analysis above, PD tends to favor grand narratives. The two items along with its most prominent left-hand collocate 为(for) describe China’s development as providing more opportunities for global prosperity and progress in terms of Impact, using verbs such as, 提供(provide), 推进(advance),解决 (solve),贡献 (contribute). Items included in the semantic subcategory “Green issue”, such as 生态(ecology), 自然(nature), 系统(system), 保护区(protection zone) and positive collocates around them (e.g. graceful, fine,harmonious,superior,rich)try to convey such a message in terms of Positivity that the Chinese nation is a nation that respects and protects nature and China’s development is green and eco-friendly. Chinese determination to advance the protection of ecological environment is voiced through the newsworthiness of Superlativeness with intensified verbs, e.g. 加强(strengthen), 增强(enhance), 推进(advance), 扩大 (expand). In an interrelated pattern, words semantically tagged as “Giving” are 人民(people), 贡献(contribution), 提供(supply), 倡议(initiative), describing the Impact of China’s development on the people all over the world. China’s development is always people-centered. China has contributed its share to world peace and development. The most prominent item under the category of “Calm” is 和平(peace). Besides the Positivity the item constructs itself, Impact is also constructed through the verbs, such as, 倡导(advocate),维护(maintain),营造(build), 建设(construct),坚持(uphold), to stress China’s contribution and positive role in maintaining the world peace. Items tagged “Change”,for instance, 发展(development), 改善(improve),变(change),变化(transformation),seem to suggest that China’s development has substantially promoted the development of the world in terms of Positivity. In comparison to the key semantic tags of PD Corpus in Table 3 , the key semantic tags of IBD Corpus (in Table 4 ) appear more “business” at first glance. Items tagged “Business:Generally”, such as, 贸易(trade), 商业(commerce) represent the smoothness and convenience in China’s trade with other countries in terms of Positivity. Another notable news value Superlativeness is constructed through the use of ordinal numbers,such as,第一(first), 第二(second),to characterize China as the largest or second largest trading partner of many countries or regions in the world. And this is often accompanied by the use of statistic numbers (e.g. a growth of 9.6%, 1.56 trillion yuan). Table 4 Key semantic tags in the IBD Corpus No. Semantic tag In IBD Corpus In reference PD Corpus Log likelihood O1 %1 O2 %2 1 Business: Generally 4318 1.20 3018 0.39 + 2280.20 2 Business: Selling 2607 0.72 2190 0.28 + 1043.92 3 Money and pay 2584 0.72 2791 0.36 + 620.20 4 Numbers 12757 3.54 22048 2.84 + 380.70 5 Quantities: many/much 1391 0.39 1571 0.20 + 297.79 The next business subcategory mainly consists of items, such as, 出口(export), 进口(import),销售(sell),产品(products),which depict China’s prosperous and continuously expanding trade with other countries by means of Superlativeness (e.g. 18.1 trillion yuan, a growth of 18%,760,000 tons,128 billion US dollars). Similar to the semantic tags in previous category, the subcategory of “Money and pay” prominently used many numbers, quantifiers to create a newsworthiness of Superlativeness, showing the vitality and resilience of China’s Trade (e.g. ten times,1.475 million TEUs,over 50,000 varieties). In the subcategory of “Numbers”, Timeliness is constructed through the temporal references (e.g. the year of 2022, January 29,mid-October) to show the continuously updated information of China trade. Items tagged “Quantities: many/much”, such as, 很多(many), 越来越多(more),愈加(increasingly), 额外(extra) are used to indicate China expanding trade with other countries in terms of Superlativeness. Collocation analysis of“一带一路”(BRI) Collocation is “a way of understanding meanings and associations between words which are otherwise difficult to ascertain from a small-scale analysis of a single text” (Baker,2006:96) and collocation analysis “can indeed pinpoint repeated constellations of specific news values constructed around entities” (Potts, et al., 2015 :161). This study intends to use collocation analysis to find out the news values constructed in the immediate co-text of “一带一路”(BRI). The corpus software AntConc 4.3.1 is used to generate the list of collocates as mentioned before. It shows there are 4970 occurrences of “一带一路” (BRI) and 202 collocates in PD Corpus by searching the window span of +/-5 with a minimum frequency of 3. We only analyze the top 100 collocates as listed below(Table 5 ). Table 5 Top 100 collocates of “一带一路” (BRI) in PD Corpus Category Collocates Nouns 共建(joint construction), 倡议(initiative), 质量(quality), 联盟(alliance), 合作(cooperation), 高峰(summit), 周年(anniversary), 框架(framework), 年(year), 成果(achievements), 行动(action), 文件(document), 沿线(along the Belt and Road), 开幕式(opening ceremony), 原则(principle), 媒体(media), 现代化(modernization), 伙伴(partner), 报告(report), 中国(China), 生态(ecology), 发展(development), 技术(technology), 实践(practice), 新闻(news), 产业(industry), 国际联盟(international alliance), 市场(market), 文化(culture), 源泉(source), 征管(tax collection and administration), 全国(the whole country), 经济(economy), 安全(security), 研讨会(seminar), 公司(company), 路(path), 备忘录(memorandum), 圈(circle), 智(intelligence), 大会(conference), 各方(all parties) Verbs 提出(propose), 来(go), 推动(promote), 举办(hold), 发布(release), 参与(participate), 是(be), 签署(sign), 取得(achieve), 建设(construct), 建(build), 证明(prove), 改革(reform), 互联(interconnect), 首倡(first propose), 展望(prospect), 互通(interflow), 融入(integrate), 推进(advance), 比(compared to ), 进入(enter), 表示(say), 源自(originate from), 发起(initiate), 回眸(retrospect), 走(go), 谅解(understand), 保护(protect), 评价(evaluate), 支持(support) Adjectives 高(high), 国际(international), 廉洁(incorruptible), 丰硕(fruitful), 绿色(green), 当地(local), 蓬勃(vigorous), 积极(active), 立体(three-dimensional), 重要(important), 从无到有(from scratch) Others 第三(third), 届(session), 八(eight), 十( ten), 下(under), 万(ten thousand), 等(etc.), 共(together), 一(one), 项(item), 和(and), 为(for), 同(with) Table 5 shows that the top 100 collocates of “一带一路” (BRI) include many words pertaining to meeting (summit, anniversary,opening ceremony,seminar,conference,all parties,memorandum,hold,release,session), which is characteristic of the reporting of “一带一路”(BRI) in the year of 2023, when is the 10th anniversary of the BRI’s proposal. It is assumed that many meetings will be held to celebrate this event including The third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which was the most grand event and the highest-level international event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the BRI in that year. Proximity and Timeliness are thus established through reference to the meeting (third, ten, year, China, the whole country). Most nouns seem unrelated to news values, referring to the themes of the meeting: ecology, development, technology, practice, industry, international alliance, market, and culture. Some verb collocates construct the news values of Impact (promote,advance,achieve, protect, support). Most adjective collocates represent a positive image of the BRI constructing Positivity through qualifiers (high, incorruptible,fruitful, green, vigorous, positive, important) with high often co-occurs with quality . Looking into the numerals, we found that 万(ten-thousand) constructs Superlativeness to highlight the huge contribution of the "Belt and Road" to the world development as shown below. Example 21 到2030年, 共建 “一带一路”有望帮助全球760 万 人摆脱极端贫困, 使3200 万 人摆脱中度贫困. (By 2030, jointly building the “Belt and Road” is expected to help lift 7.6 million people worldwide out of extreme poverty and enable 32 million to escape moderate poverty. 2023-10-31, PD) The term “一带一路”(BRI) occurred 2528 times in the IBD Corpus and 94 collocates were found within the window span of +/-5 with a minimum frequency of 3(Table 6 ). It is unsurprising that the collocates in IBD corpus exhibit many similarities in constructing news values of Proximity, Timeliness, Positivity, and Superlativeness. Considering that both are mainstream official media outlets in China, IBD maintains a high level of consistency with PD in reporting on major political events, albeit with a shift in focus. They share a large number of words particularly in the categories of verbs ( propose, sign, promote, advance),adjectives (high, active, important) and Other(session, third, eight, ten). It is interesting to note that half of the top ten noun collocates appear in a similar order in the two media (joint construction, initiative, quality, cooperation, anniversary). A prominent divergence is found in the use of proper nouns of personal names (e.g. Qi Xin,Xi Jinping). Qi Xin is the Director of the BRI Economic and Trade Cooperation Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce. Consequently, Eliteness is constructed through the reference to Qi Xin and President Xi Jinping. Upon closer examination of the noun collocates, it appears that IBD constructs greater Timeliness and Proximity by incorporating more temporal words (year, this year, October) and more business-related terms (industry, foreign trade, yuan, dollars, products, logistics, freight trains, industrial chain). Table 6 Top 94 collocates of “一带一路”(BRI) in IBD Corpus Category Collocates Nouns 共建(joint contribution), 倡议(initiative), 国家 (country), 沿线 (along the Belt and Road), 质量 (quality), 周年 (anniversary), 合作 (cooperation), 高峰 (summit), 建设 (construction), 文件 (document), 备忘录 (memorandum), 谅解 (understanding), 论坛 (forum), 年 (year), 产品 (product), 美元 (dollar), 框架 (framework), 产业 (industry), 外贸 (foreign trade), 经济 (economy), 能源 (energy), 行动 (action), 技术 (technology), 旗舰 (flagship), 地区 (region), 非金融 (non-financial), 元 (yuan), 景 (scenery), 规划 (plan), 班列 (freight train), 大家庭 (big family), 底色 (background color), 物流 (logistics), 产业链 (industrial chain), 祈欣(Qi Xin), 原则 (principle), 工笔画 (fine brushwork), 会 (meeting), 出口 (export), 理论 (theory), 科技 (science and technology), 丛书 (book series), 投资 (investment), 创新 (innovation), 十月 (October), 展望 (prospect), 农业 (agriculture), 政策 (policy), 习近平(Xi Jinping), 领域 (field), 之际 (occasion), 汽车 (automobile), 今年 (this year) Verbs 共建 (jointly contribute), 提出 (propose), 签署 (sign), 走 (go), 参与 (participate), 推进 (advance), 融入 (integrate), 推动 (promote), 建 (build), 开拓 (explore), 加入 (join), 深耕 (cultivate deeply), 提升 (enhance), 期盼 (look forward to), 深受 (be deeply influenced) Adjectives 高 (high), 深 (deep), 实(substantive), 大 (big), 重要 (important), 积极 (active) Other 届 (session), 与 (with), 在 (in), 对 (to), 下 (under), 随着 (along with), 十 (ten), 第三 (third), 八 (eight), 亿 (hundred million)、一 (one), 为 (for), 等 (etc.) Discussion The present discursive news values analysis shows how news values are constructed in the reporting on the BRI by a party newspaper and an industry newspaper in China. Overall, it reveals that PD and IBD demonstrate some similarities in constructing newsworthiness since both of them are official newspapers and represent the Chinese government.“Chinese media are influenced by collective culture, socialist harmonious values, and other ideological consciousness, resulting in a tendency toward homogenized coverage of the BRI ”(Li and Wu, 2024:17). However, notable discrepancies are also found in the prominence of news values, as well as in the discourse strategies and linguistic devices that construct them. News values in headlines. Both PD and IBD construct Positivity, Proximity, and Superlativeness predominantly in headlines, highlighting “China opportunity” and economic benefits that BRI brought to the world. The People’s Daily often employs “positive rhetorical discourse to guide public opinion” (Wang and Du, 2019:75). However, a discrepancy found in constructing Positivity is that PD is more prone to promoting national ideology and emphasizing on the prosperity of economy. “News reports on the BRI in PD are mostly based on the theme of “a community with a shared future for mankind”, and give a positive interpretation of the BRI on a macro level ( Wang and Mao ,2018:34). Whereas IBD covers more reports on international trade and investment policies, with an emphasis on the resilience of trade. This discrepancy can be explained by their distinct positioning.As the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the CPC, the primary mission of PD is to publicize the party's theories and policies and strengthen national consciousness; whereas the IBD, as an economic newspaper under the administration of the Ministry of Commerce, focuses more on trade and economic information and international business exchanges, with a relatively diluted ideological tone. IBD shows a bit higher percentage of Proximity than PD, which may be accounted for by the fact that IBD primarily serves business decision-making which evokes a more urgent need for Proximity.In spite of similar percentage of Superlativeness in PD and IBD, they adopt distinctive ways of reporting. IBD adopts a micro- perspective focusing more on the economy, trade, mutual benefits between China and the BRI countries, whereas PD adopts a much more macro-perspective stressing on the grand narrative of “China opportunity”. As found in previous research, the reporting perspective of PD tends to be macro and abstract, with relatively flexible and diverse narrative methods (Wang and Mao, 2018:34) A notable contrast is observed in constructing Impact and Timeliness, particularly Eliteness. PD constructed far more Eliteness in headlines through reference to elite figures, while Eliteness is seldom constructed in IBD headlines and often constructed through reference to elite organizations.The PD as the party newspaper, focuses on the political dimension, highlighting the diplomatic activities and policy guidance of national leaders,thus constructing Eliteness. Whereas the IBD, as an economic media outlet, pays more attention to commercial cooperation and economic and trade exchanges, hence elite organizations appear more frequently. While the news value of Impact is significantly more constructed in IBD than in PD, PD demonstrated greater Timeliness than IBD, which focuses more on reporting the economic and trade cooperation achievements and long-term impact brought by the BRI, while as a comprehensive party newspaper PD emphasizes the Timeliness of policy dynamics and leadership activities of national leaders to reflect the advancement rhythm of national strategies. News values in the body report and collocates. In the semantic tags analysis, it is found that PD put more attention on the key areas of The Universe, Green issues, Giving, Calm and Change. In contrast, IBD emphasizes more on business and financial areas, such as Business:Generally, Business:Selling, Money and pay, Numbers, Quantities:many/much.This finding demonstrates respective emphases in the reporting of PD and IBD. PD is dedicated to promoting national policies and guidelines, whereas IBD focuses on facilitating the exchange of economic and trade information. As a consequence, PD constructs more newsworthiness of Positivity and Impact highlighting the positive impact and benefits that BRI brings to China and other countries, whereas IBD constructs more Superlativeness and Timeliness emphasizing the vitality and resilience in the BRI trade. The news values constructed by the top 100 collocates of “一带一路”(BRI) in both media exhibit some similarity. Proximity, Timelines, Positivity, and Superlativeness are the four dominant news values for both newspapers. However, the news values of Proximity and Timeliness are more prominent in IBD,which may be explained by the fact that IBD has higher requirements for details in economic and trade information, such as geographical location, project progress, and business dynamics. Despite the separate analysis above, it finds that Positivity, Superlativeness and Impact are established throughout the news reporting, which indicates that certain news values might be constructed on a specific event, such as the BRI in our case. Summary. Significant differences are found in constructing news values around the global event “一带一路” (BRI) between party newspaper and industry newspaper in China. While PD constructs more Timeliness, especially Eliteness in the headlines, IBD constructs more Impact and Proximity. In the body part, PD constructs more newsworthiness of Positivity and Impact, whereas IBD constructs more Superlativeness and Timeliness. In the collocates of “一带一路”(BRI), Proximity and Timeliness are more prominent in IBD. As the mouth piece of Chinese government, the party newspaper PD is dedicated to promoting China’s national ideology and policies, which are often embedded in the speeches of national leaders or important activities that they participated in. The reporting of those, especially represented as headlines, will construct Eliteness and Timiliness. Besides, PD often takes a grand narrative in the reporting, emphasizing the prosperity of trade in order to unite the people and boost their confidence in the BRI. In contrast, the industry newspaper IBD puts more emphasis on the influence of the BRI on the world economy, positioning itself as the facilitator of trade in the countries along the BRI route, for instance, providing information. Thus Impact and Proximity are more prominent in the headlines of IBD. PD paid much more attention to the semantic domain of “universe”, highlighting the positive Impact of “China opportunity” on the world development, in which a great deal of Positivity and Impact were established.In contrast, IBD focused more on the “business” domain, stressing on the massive scale of trade and the robust vitality of the BRI through numbers and statistics. Thus Superlativeness and Timeliness are more prominent in the reporting of IBD. Similar to the findings in the headlines, Proximity and Timeliness are more prominent in the collocates of “一带一路”(BRI)in IBD since it has a more urgent need of providing trade information as an industry newspaper. Conclusion This study has revealed the similarities and discrepancies of two Chinese mainstream media in constructing newsworthiness in their reporting on the BRI. The contributions of this study lie in four folds. First, unlike most previous comparative studies carried out cross-culturally, this study is undertaken within a single language, Chinese, which is relatively under-explored. Second, it has demonstrated the application of Chinese semantic tags analysis in DNVA studies, proving that it is an effective method to identify the key areas wherein newsworthiness is constructed. Third, A wide range of events or issues have been explored within the framework of DNVA, including national day, maritime security, Hurricane Katrina, Australia’s forest fires, Chinese tennis player Li Na etc., but global topics such as the “Belt and Road” Initiative, might be discussed within the DNVA framework for the first time, offering a framework to enhance people’s understanding of the BRI. Finally, it significantly deepened our understanding of how media positioning, say, party newspaper and industry newspaper, affects the reporting of different media outlets on the same event, particularly in terms of newsworthiness. This study has several limitations. First, we only analyzed news values established in the immediate context of references to “BRI” in top 100/94 collocates, rather than analyzing complete texts and all collocates.Secondly,We analyzed only the written texts (excluding news photographs and other visuals) because of a deficiency in the data source, and utilized a limited number of computational techniques, such as POS tags, key semantic tags, and collocation.The future study may continue to explore the potential of key semantic tag analysis in DNVA studies, particularly in a Chinese context. Additionally, comparing a Chinese party newspaper with a metropolitan newspaper is encouraged, as it will yield more insightful findings than comparing two Chinese official newspapers. Finally, a diachronic study of the newsworthiness constructed around the BRI over time may deepen our understanding of how themes and frameworks evolve through the construction of different news values. Declarations Funding We acknowledge receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: The Social Science Fund of Fujian Province [福建社会科学基金项目] [grant number FJ2022BF023]. Author Contribution Han CX originally conceptualized the project and conducted data analyses and the primary framing of the original manuscript. He J substantially contributed to the project and refinement of the manuscript. All authors agreed and consented to the publication. Data Availability The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in Appendix 2 and Appendix 3. Appendix 2 demonstrates the news reporting data of People’s Daily, and Appendix 3 shows the news reporting data of International Business Daily. References An S, Liang X (2018) Framing China’s Image in U.S. News: A Study of Belt and Road Forum Coverage by American Mainstream Media. J Harbin Inst Technol 20(2):82–88 Anthony L (2024) AntConc (Version 4.3.1) [Computer Software]. Waseda University,Tokyo, Japan. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/AntConc Baker P (2006) Using corpora in discourse analysis. Continuum, London/New York Barnhurst KG, Nerone J (2001) The form of news: A history. Guilford, New York Bednarek M, Caple H (2012) Value added: Language, image and news values. Discourse Context Media 1(2–3):103–113 Bednarek M, Caple H (2017) The discourse of news values: How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford University Press, New York Bednarek M, Caple H, Huan C (2021) Computer-based analysis of news values: a case study on national day reporting. Journalism Stud 22(6):702–722 Bell A (1991) The Language of news media. Blackwell, Oxford Caple H, Bednarek M (2013) Delving into the discourse:Approaches to news values in journalism studies and beyond[R]. University of Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Caple H, Huan C, Bednarek M (2020) Multimodal news analysis across cultures. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Chen C, Liu R (2024) Discrepancies in the newsworthiness of maritime security in Chinese and US media outlets: a corpus-based discursive news values analysis. Humanit Social Sci Commun 11(1):1–12 Chen C, Liu R (2023) Confucius in The Times from 1785 to 2019: a diachronic news discourse analysis of newsworthiness. Humanit Social Sci Commun 10(1):1–13 Chen C, Liu R (2024) Discrepancies in the newsworthiness of maritime security in Chinese and US media outlets: a corpus-based discursive news values analysis. Humanit Social Sci Commun 11(1):1–12 Chu J, Hassan Z, Sikandar SM (2025) The framing of the BRI in Indo-Pakistani media. Humanit Social Sci Commun 12(1):1–10 Harcup T, D O’neill (2017) What is News? News Values Revisited (Again). Journalism Stud 18(12):1470–1488 Hou YZ, Cai SL (2018) A framing analysis of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in Hong Kong mainstream newspapers: Case studies of South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Economic Times, and Ming Pao. Mod Communication (Journal Communication Univ China) 40(10):85–89 Kuteleva A, Vasiliev D (2020) China’s BRI in Russian media: Politics of narratives, images, and metaphors. Eurasian Geogr Econ 62(5–6):582–606 Li DF, Wu K (2024) Corpus-based area studies: A topic modeling analysis of BRI coverage in Chinese and American mainstream media. Computer-Assisted Foreign Lang Educ, (4):10–17 Liu GB, Zhang XL (2020) An analysis of attitudinal resources in Chinese media’s coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative: A case study of China Daily. J Xi’an Int Stud Univ 28(2):15–21 Molek-Kozakowska K (2013) Towards a pragma-linguistic framework for the study of sensationalism in news headlines. Discourse Communication 7(2):173–197 Nie H (2019) The Belt and Road Initiative in Malaysian Chinese Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis Based on News Reports from Sin Chew Daily. Young Journalists (30):47–49 Potts A, Bednarek M, Caple H (2015) How can computer-based methods help researchers to investigate news values in large datasets? A corpus linguistic study of the construction of newsworthiness in the reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Discourse Communication 9(2):149–172 Rayson P (2008) From key words to key semantic domains. Int J Corpus Linguistics 13(4):519–549 Rayson P, Berridge D, Francis B (2004) Extending the Cochran rule or the comparison of word frequencies between corpora. In: Purnelle G, Fairon C and Dister A (eds) Le Poids des Mots: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on statistical analysis of textual data (JADT 2004). Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, pp. 926–936 Ren Z, Zhou L (2023) Discourse strategies in mainstream media’s international reporting on the Belt and Initiative. News Tide, (8):7–9 Richardson J (2007) Analyzing newspapers. An approach from critical discourse analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke Shi K, Jin S (2021) Malaysian media representations of the Belt and Road Initiative: A transitivity perspective. Foreign Lang Res 38(5):24–32 Shirk SL (2011) Changing media, changing China. Oxford University Press, Oxford Sun YZ, Jiang L (2017) Belt and Road in Australian Mainstream Media [J]. Modern Communication, 2017,39(04):37–41 + 84 Tong B, Chen X (2014) Dictionary of journalism and communication. Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, Beijing Van Djik TA (1998) Ideology: A multidisciplinary Approach. Sage, London/Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi Wang RL, Mao YX (2018) A study on national image construction in People’s Daily (Overseas Edition): A case study of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Media, (17):33–36 Wang SQ, Du SY (2019) A study on the framing of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in People’s Daily Overseas Edition. Young Journal, (2), 74–75 Wang XK (2018) A study of U.S. mainstream media coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative—Case studies of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Youth Journal, (6):87–88 Wu MH, Wang LF (2021) An analysis of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in Pakistani mainstream media. Youth Journal, (10):104–105 Xie ZH (2023) Shaping and reflecting: Regional media representation and pathway selection of national discourse—A framing analysis of ASEAN countries’ coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative. Journalism Enthus, (10): 51–55 Yang H, Van Gorp B (2023) A frame analysis of political-media discourse on the BRI: evidence from China, Australia, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Camb Rev Int Affairs 36(5):625–651 Yu H, Liu S (2023) The pandemic in our country, the pandemic in their countries: news values and media representation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journalism Stud 24(10):1257–1276 Zhang L, Caple H (2021) The newsworthiness of Li Na—A critical comparative analysis of Chinese and international news media. Lang Communication 77:70–80 Zhang L, Wu D (2017) Media representations of China: A comparison of China daily and financial times in reporting on the BRI. Crit Arts 31(6):29–43 Zhang Y, Yi D (2022) A comparative metaphor analysis of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in British and American mainstream media. Computer-Assisted Foreign Lang Educ, (4):58–64 Zhou C, Kang J (2016) How do mainstream American media construct a media framework for the Belt and Road [J]. Mod Communication 38(06):163–165 Zou L (2023) News Construction of the Belt and Road Initiative by German Media — Based on a Framework Analysis of News from Eight Mainstream German Media (2013–2022). Journal of Journalism and Communication, 2023,76(01):57–75 Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files Supplementaryinformation.zip Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 20 Feb, 2026 Reviews received at journal 16 Feb, 2026 Reviewers agreed at journal 22 Jan, 2026 Reviews received at journal 03 Jan, 2026 Reviewers agreed at journal 03 Jan, 2026 Reviewers invited by journal 03 Dec, 2025 Editor invited by journal 16 Oct, 2025 Editor assigned by journal 07 Oct, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 25 Sep, 2025 First submitted to journal 15 Sep, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7621200","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":555270341,"identity":"f82672a2-a710-4aae-9df2-634c5ca2e87b","order_by":0,"name":"Cunxin Han","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Jimei University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Cunxin","middleName":"","lastName":"Han","suffix":""},{"id":555270343,"identity":"e95f57f4-7622-4000-83a2-d797193ae7b6","order_by":1,"name":"Juan He","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAA2UlEQVRIiWNgGAWjYFAC5gYGHoYDDPxADOIRo4URokWygWQtBgcYiNSi297Y+OBt2x0544On0yQYKqwTG9jPHsCrxezMwWbDuW3PjM0OnN0mwXAmPbGBJy8Bv5YbiW3SvG2HE7eBtDACGQ0SPAb4tdx/CNZSv7kBpOUfMVpuMIK1JBgwgLQ0EKPlTGKz4Zxzhw1nHDi72SLhWLpxG08OAS3HDx988KbssDz/jLMbb3yosZbtZz+DXwsYMLIBCYkDDAwJQJqNsHoQ+APE/A3EqR0Fo2AUjIKRBwDFt1ASWIwgSwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"","institution":"Jimei University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Juan","middleName":"","lastName":"He","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-09-15 13:38:29","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7621200/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7621200/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":97541359,"identity":"6b1b9cc3-f54e-448b-a3a5-8de4077e7435","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-05 15:14:22","extension":"docx","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":307949,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"ThenewsworthinessinthecoverageoftheBeltandRoadInitiativeacomparativeanalysisofChinesepartynewspaperandindustrynewspaperrevised2.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/40cdd1e5b87636469f8a86ea.docx"},{"id":97541357,"identity":"62d85b87-893c-4b8b-b54a-c18650261853","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-05 15:14:22","extension":"json","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":4185,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"01d7603b464a417095a6f030a7917bc4.json","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/648e5c50fd65e942a843122f.json"},{"id":97672022,"identity":"0731584a-2312-4c3a-961f-a375951b153d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-08 09:33:48","extension":"zip","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":6905772,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Supplementaryinformation.zip","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/e19c4b5410e6fae075c7e6f7.zip"},{"id":97541360,"identity":"5df2265b-3ef2-4628-944a-b89c0e110ea6","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-05 15:14:22","extension":"xml","order_by":3,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":128417,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"01d7603b464a417095a6f030a7917bc41enriched.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/56eaafce25a6ee0fd7172795.xml"},{"id":97541361,"identity":"32da9bb2-64c9-414e-aebf-5ebd0bef8897","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-05 15:14:22","extension":"xml","order_by":5,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":134770,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"01d7603b464a417095a6f030a7917bc41structuring.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/f2fee6d7268a875f5f13c6da.xml"},{"id":97541362,"identity":"df42e24a-a730-47a9-8e79-59d5bdcc3ea0","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-05 15:14:22","extension":"html","order_by":6,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":137254,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"earlyproof.html","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/78fa7bb0c868ad65e3510a1d.html"},{"id":97541358,"identity":"2996fb3c-6068-43d3-bb93-41393a824c68","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-05 15:14:22","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":30179,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eNews values constructed by headlines\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/7a4dc8282cd86bf00485ffe5.png"},{"id":97678001,"identity":"28567f24-0bc1-4788-a4c1-f8f799618c9f","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-08 09:55:02","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1080370,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/a08676e1-fc37-43dd-aa49-1f0ca8c4c996.pdf"},{"id":97541364,"identity":"b6eda176-412b-4e97-9cc4-f5eca4c2471e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-05 15:14:22","extension":"zip","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":6905772,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Supplementaryinformation.zip","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7621200/v1/26ed4fe2874488b41fa3b111.zip"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"The newsworthiness in the coverage of the “Belt and Road” Initiative :a comparative analysis of Chinese party newspaper and industry newspaper","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe Belt and Road Initiative (hereafter, BRI), proposed by China in 2013, stands for the \u0026ldquo;Silk Road Economic Belt\u0026rdquo;and the \u0026ldquo;21st Century Maritime Silk Road\u0026rdquo;, aiming to enhance global cooperation through infrastructure connectivity, trade and investment collaboration, and cultural exchanges, with a focus on developing countries. The initiative promotes policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and closer people-to-people ties to foster shared development. The BRI has attracted significant media attention due to its massive scale, global impact, and potential for infrastructure development and economic cooperation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch research has been conducted on media representation of BRI in the main stream media of countries including the United States, Australia, Japan, as well as nations along the BRI route, such as Russia, Pakistan, Malaysia ( An and Liang, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Nie, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Kuteleva and Vasiliev, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e;Wu and Wang, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e).These studies employ multiple analytical approaches, such as frame analysis, agenda-setting, content analysis, corpus analysis, aiming to reveal the attitudes, positions, and perceptions of national media/governments toward the BRI. And some research just focused on Chinese media, such as \u003cem\u003ePeople\u0026rsquo;s Daily\u003c/em\u003e(Overseas Edition), \u003cem\u003eChina Daily.\u003c/em\u003e They explore the reporting framework and attitude resources in the reports (Wang and Du, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Liu and Zhang, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA contrastive perspective is found prominent and contrast was made at various levels. Intercultural contrastive studies were conducted between eastern media and western media, between Chinese media and other foreign media such as American media, British media, Japanese media, between American media and British media, between Pakistan media and Indian media (Zhang and Wu,2017; Yang and Van Gorp, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Xie,2023; Chu etc.,2025). Intra-cultural contrastive studies were carried out between media outlets within Hongkong and China. For instance, Ren and Zhou (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) studied the discourse strategies of three mainstream media, including \u003cem\u003ePeople\u0026rsquo;s Daily\u003c/em\u003e (Overseas Edition), \u003cem\u003eChina Daily\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eXinhua News Agency English website\u003c/em\u003e, in their BRI foreign coverage. Hou and Cai (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) studied the reporting frameworks of three mainstream newspapers in Hong Kong on the BRI.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo sum, extensive research has been undergone on the news reporting on the BRI in the mainstream media of countries from multiple perspectives. These studies have yielded significant findings that will help us understand the attitudes of various nations toward the BRI as well as their reporting characteristics. However, we observe that compared to cross-cultural contrastive studies, intra-cultural contrastive research remains relatively scarce, particularly comparing two Chinese media featuring different target audience. Furthermore, while existing research perspectives are diverse, studies on the BRI from the perspective of Discursive News Value Analysis (DNVA) remain relatively uncommon.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis article analyzes and compares the news values constructed in the news reporting from two Chinese mainstream media, i.e. \u003cem\u003ePeople\u0026rsquo;s Daily\u003c/em\u003e (PD) and \u003cem\u003eInternational Business Daily\u003c/em\u003e (IBD)around the BRI, revealing how the same event has been discursively represented in different ways, uncovering their discrepancies in news values constructed on the BRI and how the positioning of newspapers affects the discursive representation of the BRI between the two media outlets.Adopting corpus linguistic methods and the discursive news values analysis (DNVA) framework, this study examines news values not only in headlines but also in the body part through POS tags, key semantic tags and collocation analysis in the two newspapers.This study aims to answer the following three questions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat news values are discursively construed in the reporting on the BRI in PD and IBD\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow are these news values typically constructed by PD and IBD in the reporting on the BRI?\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy are these news values constructed by PD and IBD in the reporting on the BRI?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExploring these questions will help us understand if some news values are more constructed on a particular topic and if different types of Chinese mainstream media, for instance, the politically oriented, comprehensive party newspaper PD and market-oriented specialized industry newspaper, IBD,construct distinct news values concerning the same topic of the BRI.This study also reveals the similarities and differences in discourse strategies and linguistic devices between the two media outlets in representing the BRI, thereby offering an insight into how the media positioning impacts the construction of newsworthiness and discursive representation of the social event.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eMedia coverage of the BRI\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch attention has been paid to the media representation of the BRI in mainstream media outlets worldwide.The Chinese mainstream media, including \u003cem\u003ePeople\u0026rsquo;s Daily\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eChina Daily\u003c/em\u003e, reported on the BRI positively. Much of these research focused on the reporting framework, national image, and discourse strategies(Wang and Mao,2018; Wang and Du,2019;Ren and Zhou,2023). Similarly, the media of countries along the BRI route,such as Russia, Malaysia, Pakistan, reported the BRI in a mostly positive manner (Shi and Jin, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e;Wu and Wang,2021). For instance, Kuteleva and Vasiliev (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) found that Russian newspapers support the official narrative of Sino-Russian relations and follow trends rather than create them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike the basically positive tone in the coverage in the countries along the BRI route, most non-BRI developed countries adopt a negative and skeptical attitude (An and Liang, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e;Wang, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). For instance, research shows that the media framework in \u003cem\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c/em\u003e was predominantly negative, with reporting tones leaning toward \u0026ldquo;doubt\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;concern\u0026rdquo;(Zhou and Kang, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). Mainstream media in Germany and Australia share a very similar tendency to report on the BRI as American media, emphasizing \u0026ldquo;criticism\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;conflict\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;threat\u0026rdquo;(Sun and Jiang, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Zou, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe intercultural differences in the reporting of the BRI were also explored (Zhang and Yi ,2022; Chu etc.,2025 ). These studies reveal that the reporting of the BRI in each country was consistent with their respective national interests and foreign policies.For instance, \u003cem\u003eChina Daily\u003c/em\u003e has attempted to emphasize the initiative\u0026rsquo;s positive attributes and represented China as a peace-loving nation, an international cooperator, and an emerging global economic and responsible power. In \u003cem\u003eFinancial Times\u003c/em\u003e, China is portrayed mostly as an authoritarian state, a militant and obstructive force, and a geopolitical threat (Zhang and Wu, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Chinese media emphasized positive themes like \u0026ldquo;development\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;mutual benefit\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;cooperation\u0026rdquo;, reflecting the core values and objectives of the BRI. In contrast, American media tended to highlight negative aspects such as \u0026ldquo;security\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;risks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;challenges\u0026rdquo; adopting a critical or even defamatory stance (Li and Wu, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt finds that the majority of comparative studies have been conducted cross-culturally, with little attention given to the comparison of two Chinese media.This study aims to compare two Chinese mainstream media, one party newspaper and one industry newspaper, aiming to help us understand how the different positioning of newspapers impact their reporting on the BRI in terms of newsworthiness.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eNews values and a discursive approach to news values\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;News values\u0026rdquo; has long been a crucial concept in journalism studies and explored from various perspectives. From a material perspective, news values are defined as \u0026ldquo;the inherent qualities of an event\u0026rdquo; (Harcup and O\u0026rsquo;neill, 2017), which exist inde- pendently of journalists. From social and cognitive perspectives, they are regarded as professional competence and cognition of journalists\u0026mdash;the criteria employed by journalists to select, order, and prioritize the collection and production of news (Richardson, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2007\u003c/span\u003e: 91).Values have cognitive ,social and discursive aspects (Van Dijk, 1998). A discursive approach to the study of news values, Discursive News Value Analysis (DNVA), was proposed to analyse how the news values are communicated and negotiated through discourse (Bednarek and Caple \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e; Caple and Bednarek \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). This approach not only identified 11 types of news value\u0026mdash;such as Negativity, Timeliness, Proximity, and Eliteness\u0026mdash;but also established corresponding linguistic and visual resource catalogs, thereby constructing a multimodal discourse analysis framework for news value evaluation (Bednarek and Caple, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). The DNVA framework can be used to study how the newsworthiness of specific events is constructed in published news reports, demonstrating the media\u0026rsquo;s intention to attract an audience by presenting a story that is newsworthy to them (Bednarek and Caple, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e).The present study adopts the analysis framework of DNVA with an emphasis on linguistic devices as news reports are presented only in written texts in our data-set.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch attention has been paid to the media representation of social events or social figures from the perspective of DNVA recently, including maritime security, COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese tennis player Li Na, Confucius ( Zhang and Caple, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e, Yu and Liu, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Chen and Liu, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). These studies employed corpus linguistic methods exclusively including concordance analysis, collocation, and keyword analysis. However, the method of POS tags, key semantic tags, especially Chinese semantic tags, was underused, likely because of the lack of readily available corpus software that can handle the Chinese language. Thus, this study uses POS tags analysis and key semantic tags analysis via Wmatrix to uncover the differences in news values constructed in the news reports on the BRI in two Chinese mainstream newspapers, i.e. PD and IBD. It will definitely offer methodological insights for Chinese comparative DNVA studies by means of POS tags and key semantic tags.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Data and Methods","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eData.\u003c/strong\u003e This study intends to reveal the differences in news values constructed in two Chinese media outlets surrounding the topic of the BRI and investigate the impact of media positioning on news values. Two Chinese main stream media, i.e. PD and IBD were selected for the present study in light of their authority and big circularity in China.The PD is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the largest newspaper in China. The viewpoints and attitudes in its reports represent the mainstream ideology of China. The IBD is a national-level newspaper sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of the People\u0026rsquo;s Republic of China and distributed by the International Business News Agency, a direct affiliate of the Ministry. It is one of the most widely circulated newspapers in China. Both are national official newspapers, yet they emphasize different themes and serve different functions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe search term\u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; (BRI) was used as the keyword to retrieve one year\u0026rsquo;s news reports of 2023 from the online \u003cem\u003eDatabase of Chinese Key Newspapers\u003c/em\u003e (中国重要报纸全文数据库)in that the year of 2023 marks the 10th Anniversary of the launch of the \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; initiative, which is of symbolic significance. This milestone will trigger concentrated reviews and summary reports by domestic and foreign media. Anniversary events (such as summit forums) generate a large number of news reports, ensuring an adequate research sample. The extracted news reports are grouped into two separate corpora: the People's Daily BRI News Reporting Corpus (hereafter,PD Corpus) and the International Business Daily BRI News Reporting Corpus (hereafter, IBD Corpus). The statistic information of the two corpora are presented as follows (Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1)\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMethods.\u003c/strong\u003e Corpus linguistic methods are combined in this DNVA study to examine the news values construed in: (1) headlines which provide \u0026ldquo;the ultimate summary or abstract of a news story \u0026rdquo;(Bell \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1991\u003c/span\u003e: 186); (2) body of the reports concerning \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI); (3) collocations of the term\u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; (BRI). On these bases, we also analyzed the ways through which news values are constructed. The analysis comprises the following steps listed below.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePrimarily, the news values constructed in headlines are identified manually by referring to the definitions of 10 news values and their construction strategies illustrated in Appendix 1 (Bednarek et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e:707). The analysis will be complemented by the POS tag analysis. The software Excel is used to record the coding process and counting the frequencies of news values for each headline.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSecondly, semantic tags appear the most insightful for providing an overview of newsworthiness (Potts et al.,2015:169). A web-based tool Wmatrix,which is a software tool for corpus analysis and comparison(Rayson, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e), is used to generate the list of key semantic tags for each corpus by comparing reciprocally. The main statistic employed in this comparison is log likelihood (LL).LL ratio is used for ranking keyness and identifying statistically significant collocates by measuring the confidence that results are not due to chance (Rayson et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2004\u003c/span\u003e). The LL cut-off, and frequency cut-off are set at 6.63 and 5. Concordance analysis is followed to examine the newsworthiness pointed by these words and semantic domains. In the meanwhile, the discourse strategies and linguistic devices will be analyzed.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThirdly, collocation analysis may be useful for identifying news values established in the co-text of topic-associated words (Potts et al.,2015:169). To find out, we undertook a collocation analysis of the key term \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI)using AntConc(Anthony, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). The list of collocates are generated using MI3 value,and a minimum collocation frequency of 3 within the span of +/-5.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLastly,we will discuss the social structures(political system, press censorship, media positioning and function)that influence the newsworthiness constructed by \u003cem\u003ePD\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eIBD\u003c/em\u003e surrounding \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI)for the two news media outlets are powerfully dominated by Chinese politics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe corpora in studying the reports on the BRI\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCorpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNumber of news reports\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWords\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e393\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e626,850\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIBD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e280\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e294,133\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, all the newspapers in China are run under the guidance of the Chinese government and censored by the governmental publicity department. Therefore, the news reporting is greatly dominated by China\u0026rsquo;s political structure and serves as the mouthpiece of the Chinese government (Shirk, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSecond, metropolis newspaper, communist party newspaper and specialized industry newspapers are ranked as the three major types of newspapers in China (Tong and Chen, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e:61). PD is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), whose core mission is to publicize the party\u0026rsquo;s theories, guidelines, and policies, with a distinct political orientation, while IBD, an industry newspaper under the administration of the Ministry of Commerce, specializes in economic and trade affairs, serving China\u0026rsquo;s opening-up and international trade.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThird, PD targets Party members, officials, and the general public, highlighting national development achievements, and governance cases, while IBD primarily serves trade departments, enterprises, and research institutions, concentrates on economic actors, for instance, enterprises, supply chains, focusing on international rules, market access, and investment environments.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThus, the analytical approach that uses political structure to explain news values and their modes of discourse construction is logically consistent and theoretically robust. Although this study focuses on revealing the construction of news values in two Chinese news media outlets, it can offer further insights into how newspapers position their audiences and affiliate with them (Caple etc., 2020).\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Findings and analysis","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis part initially presents news values in headlines with an emphasis on the three prominent shared news values: Positivity, Proximity, and Superlativeness. It then proceeds with semantic tags analysis to uncover the distinct key semantic domains wherein news values are established. Finally, collocation analysis reveals the newsworthiness constructed around the key term \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eManual analysis of headlines\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn a typical print or online news story, the headline is treated as the main \u0026ldquo;hook\u0026rdquo; for the reader(Molek-Kozakowska, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). As Barnhurst and Nerone (\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e:198) point out, headlines no longer function as titles or labels directing readers to the stories on the page: rather, they have become a \u0026ldquo;pointed summary of the news\u0026rdquo;, carrying \u0026ldquo;deeply embedded codes of news values and cultural values\u0026hellip; ranging from the unusual and the timely to the powerful and the moral\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this study, we analyzed the news values in the headlines including the sub-headlines and note down the occurrences of news values in an MS Excel spreed sheet. The analysis shows that four news values, i.e. Negativity, Consonance, Unexpectedness and Personalization occurred less than 6 times. Due to the rare occurrences of the four news values, they will not be discussed in below. Considering that the news reports of the two media are not equal in number, which renders the two corpora uneven in word counts(Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e), the analysis of this study is based on percentages instead of the total numbers(Figure \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs can be seen in Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e, both media constructed similar percentage of Positivity, Proximity and Superlativeness, while notable discrepancies are also found in the newsworthiness of Impact, Timeliness, particularly Eliteness, which in PD is nearly 8 times that of IBD. Positivity and Proximity are the two most prominent values constructed in both media, particularly Positivity, accounting for 92.6% in PD and 97.1% in IBD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePositivity, Proximity and Superlativeness\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePositivity is the first dominant news value constructed in both media since Chinese news reporting is greatly dominated by the official tones and the Chinese government (Chen and Liu, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e:9). Additionally, PD and IBD are mainstream Chinese news media administered by the Central Committee of the CPC and the Ministry of Commerce respectively,which serve as the mouth piece of Chinese government and have the highest level of censorship. The newsworthiness of Positivity in portraying China\u0026rsquo;s BRI fits the positive reporting advocated by the Chinese government. Using Wmatrix, we generated a list of positive POS tags among the top 100 frequent words in the headlines with the frequency displayed in the brackets(Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e). Note that some words listed below are neutral in isolation but take on a positive coloring in collocation with other words in the context, such as, 新(new), 高(high), 绿(green), 大(large), 共(together), 更 (more), 共同体( community), 建设(construction), 发展(develop). For example,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 1\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e奋跃而上书写新的辉煌历史篇章\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Striving forward with vigor to write a \u003cstrong\u003enew\u003c/strong\u003e glorious chapter in history 2023-01-21, PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 2\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePositive POS tags in PD and IBD Headlines\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003epositive POS tags\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePD\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIBD\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNOUN\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e发展/development\u003c/strong\u003e (111), \u003cstrong\u003e合作/cooperation\u003c/strong\u003e (83), \u003cstrong\u003e共建/joint construction\u003c/strong\u003e(49), 峰会/summit (27), \u003cstrong\u003e机遇/opportunity\u003c/strong\u003e(18), 共同体/community(17), \u003cstrong\u003econstruction/建设\u003c/strong\u003e(16), prosperity/繁荣(15), achievement/成果(14), assist/助力(12)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e合作/cooperation\u003c/strong\u003e(53), 投资/ investment(15), \u003cstrong\u003e共建/joint contribution\u003c/strong\u003e(14), \u003cstrong\u003e发展/development\u003c/strong\u003e(13), \u003cstrong\u003e机遇/opportunity\u003c/strong\u003e(11)活力/vitality, (8)韧性/resilience(6), 伙伴/partner(5), \u003cstrong\u003e建设/construction\u003c/strong\u003e(5)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eADJ\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e新/new\u003c/strong\u003e(63), \u003cstrong\u003e高/high\u003c/strong\u003e(58), 美好/beautiful(17), 热烈/lively(13)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e新/new\u003c/strong\u003e(51), \u003cstrong\u003e高/high\u003c/strong\u003e(14), 大/great(6), 绿色/green(6)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVERB\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e推动/promote\u003c/strong\u003e(54), \u003cstrong\u003e发展/develop\u003c/strong\u003e(40), 促进/promote(29), \u003cstrong\u003e共建/co-build\u003c/strong\u003e(26), \u003cstrong\u003e携手/collaborate\u003c/strong\u003e(21), \u003cstrong\u003e合作/cooperate\u003c/strong\u003e(20), \u003cstrong\u003e深化/deepen\u003c/strong\u003e(18), 推进/advance(16), \u003cstrong\u003e赢/win\u003c/strong\u003e(14)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e合作/cooperate\u003c/strong\u003e(13), \u003cstrong\u003e携手/collaborate\u003c/strong\u003e(13), \u003cstrong\u003e发展/develop\u003c/strong\u003e(12), \u003cstrong\u003e共建/co-build\u003c/strong\u003e(10), \u003cstrong\u003e推动/promote\u003c/strong\u003e(9), 增长/grow(8), \u003cstrong\u003e深化/deepen\u003c/strong\u003e, (8)前行/moving forward(7), 共享/share(6), \u003cstrong\u003e赢/win\u003c/strong\u003e(6), 促/facilitate(4)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eADV\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e共/together\u003c/strong\u003e(39), 更/more(30), 共同/jointly(27)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e共/together\u003c/strong\u003e(29), 深/deeply(6)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003ctfoot\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"3\"\u003eNote: Bold-type words are shared by both media\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tfoot\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e shows both media tend to use more nouns and verbs to construct the newsworthiness of Positivity than adjectives and adverbs. Some nouns and verbs, such as development, cooperation, joint construction, opportunity, construction, promote, develop, co-build, collaborate, deepen, win, are frequently used in both media.These words demonstrate \u0026ldquo;China\u0026rsquo;s commitment to dialogue, consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits, as well as its pursuit of win-win cooperation. They also highlight the Chinese government\u0026rsquo;s aspiration to promote international consensus on the BRI through investment and infrastructure development\u0026rdquo; (Ren and Zhou, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e:9). For example,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 2\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e促进贸易发展, 推动产业合作\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Promote trade development and advance industrial cooperation 2023-10-26,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 3\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e中巴经济走廊建设取得丰硕成果\u0026mdash;增添发展动力, 促进互利共赢\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(The construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has yielded fruitful results\u0026mdash;adding momentum to development and promoting mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. 2023-11-01,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe above examples focus on \u0026ldquo;development\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;construction\u0026rdquo;, indicating that China has positioned \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; as a global development initiative rather than a geopolitical tool. In addition, the government of China would like to emphasize that development gains are based on an equal partnership. For example,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 4\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; 经贸合作取得新成效\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(New Achievements in \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; Economic and Trade Cooperation 2023-07-20,IBD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 5\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e丝路贯通古今, 中阿携手向未来\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(The Silk Road Connects Past and Present, China and Arab Countries Collaborate for the Future 2023-07-19,IBD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy emphasizing \u0026ldquo;cooperation\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;collaboration\u0026rdquo;, the Chinese government wants to highlight the \u0026ldquo;win-win cooperation\u0026rdquo; model, reject unilateralism, and advocate equal and mutually beneficial partnerships. Furthermore, by shaping the narrative of \u0026ldquo;opportunity\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;win-win\u0026rdquo;, China wants to tell the world that \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; is not a zero-sum game, but an open and inclusive economic cooperation platform.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt last, China wishes to deepen cooperation with countries along the BRI and integration across multiple fields through the use of words \u0026ldquo;deepen\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;promote\u0026rdquo; as in the following examples.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 6\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e深化互联互通, 促进共同发展\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Deepen connectivity and promote common development 2023-11-24,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA discrepancy found in the construction of Positivity between PD and IBD is that PD incorporates more national ideology, like \u0026ldquo;人类命运共同体(a community with a shared future for mankind)\u0026rdquo; into the reporting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 7\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e建设开放、活力、强韧、和平的亚太共同体\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Building an open, dynamic, resilient, and peaceful Asia-Pacific community 2023-11-19,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll the countries participated in the BRI are described as a community with a shared future in the reporting of PD. This awareness of promoting national policies is much more pronounced in the PD\u003cem\u003e\u0026rsquo;\u003c/em\u003es coverage compared to that of the IBD. This discrepancy is most likely attributable to the distinct media attributes of these two outlets. As the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the CPC, the PD prioritizes disseminating national governance philosophies. Top-level designs like the \u0026ldquo;人类命运共同体\u0026rdquo;(a community with a shared future for mankind)naturally require repeated dissemination through the highest-tier media platforms. By contrast, the focus of IBD is on interpreting international trade and investment policies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother divergence observed in constructing Positivity is that PD emphasized \u0026ldquo;prosperity\u0026rdquo;, whereas IBD focused on \u0026ldquo;resilience\u0026rdquo; with regard to economy and trade. The difference in target audiences may explain this discrepancy. The primary readership of PD consists of party and government officials. Headlines serve the function of political mobilization, where using emotionally charged words like \u0026ldquo;prosperity\u0026rdquo; can instantly evoke their sense of national pride. In contrast, the readers of IBD are business people, and terms like \u0026ldquo;resilience\u0026rdquo; directly address their core concern of risk management requirements.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second dominant newsworthiness constructed in both media is Proximity, whose percentage is found much higher in IBD (77.5%) than PD (64.8%),which may be explained by the fact that IBD primarily serves business decision-making which evokes a more urgent need for proximity.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe percentages of Superlativeness are very close in PD (23.9%) and IBD (23.2%), which may imply that Superlativeness is a common news value constructed in Chinese main stream media or reporting on vital political events. Superlativeness is constructed through references to the dual growth in both domestic and foreign trade and investment in PD. Quantifiers referring to the growth rate construct Superlativeness in example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e8\u003c/span\u003e .\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 8\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e前4月我国对外非金融类直接投资同比增长26.6%\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(China's non-financial outbound direct investment grew by 26.6% year-on-year in the first four months. 2023-05-27,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuperlativeness are often constructed by means of intensifiers such as \u0026ldquo;high\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;tremendous\u0026rdquo; to emphasize the significance of China\u0026rsquo;s development for the world, for instance, providing development opportunities (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e9\u003c/span\u003e). Particularly, partner countries along the BRI stand to benefit from China\u0026rsquo;s development (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e10\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 9\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e高质量发展的中国为世界带来更大机遇\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(China\u0026rsquo;s high-quality development brings greater opportunities to the world 2023-03-07,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 10\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e老中互利合作为两国人民带来巨大福祉\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(The mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Laos has brought tremendous benefits to the peoples of both countries. 2023-04-25,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMore examples show that PD uses qualifiers to stress the high-quality development in China in order to unite the people\u0026rsquo;s hearts, build consensus, and contribute to the national rejuvenation (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e11\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 11\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e凝心聚力, 形成共同致力民族复兴的强大力量\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Unite our hearts and minds to forge a powerful force jointly dedicated to national rejuvenation 2023-05-12, PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBesides emphasizing the high-quality development of the BRI trade, Superlativeness constructed in IBD tends to focus more on micro-aspects instead of the grand narratives of \u0026ldquo;China Opportunity\u0026rdquo; in PD,which is also evidenced by the semantic tag analysis in the next section. More specifically, it is often constructed to summarize the mutual benefits and development that the BRI brought to China and the countries along the BRI route in the past decade (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e12\u003c/span\u003e), analyzing the present situation of this policy (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e13\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 12\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e借力一带一路东风, 小蘑菇走俏大市场\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Riding the wind of the BRI, small mushrooms become popular in big markets.2023-03-28, IBD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 13\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e中国与一带一路贸易展现强劲韧性\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(China and the Belt and Road trade demonstrate strong resilience 2023-04-18,IBD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuantifiers such as \u0026ldquo;20 trillion\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;775(trains)\u0026rdquo; and qualifiers such as \u0026ldquo;big\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;strong\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;majestic\u0026rdquo; are often used to construct Superlativeness showing the massive scale of trade and the robust vitality and momentum of the BRI trade (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e14\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 14\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e上半年外贸规模历史同期首次突破20万亿元大关\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(In the first half of the year, the scale of foreign trade exceeded the 20 trillion yuan mark for the first time in history during the same period. 2023-07-14,IBD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEliteness,Timeliness and Impact\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA notable contrast is found in constructing the newsworthiness of Eliteness between PD and IBD. In constructing Eliteness, \u0026ldquo;the event is discursively constructed as high status or fame(including but not limited to people, countries or institutions involved)\u0026rdquo;(Caple, etc., 2020:6). The data shows that Eliteness in PD headlines are more constructed by elite figures instead of elite institutions or organizations. The BRI carries strong policy attributes, with mainstream discourse primarily coming from government entities, experts and scholars, placing significant emphasis on the voices of political leaders (Wang and Du, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e:74). Notably, the Chinese President Xi Jinping appears the most frequently (43%) with a contrast of leaders of other countries or organizations (19.3%), such as Prime Minister of Vietnam, Prime Minister of Cambodia, BRICS leaders (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e15\u003c/span\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e16\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 15\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e推动构建高水平中非命运共同体-习近平主席向第36届非洲联盟峰会致贺电引发非洲各界热烈反响\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Promoting the building of a high-level China-Africa community with a shared future\u0026ndash;President Xi Jinping\u0026rsquo;s congratulatory message to the 36th African Union Summit has aroused warm response from all sectors in Africa 2023-02-20,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 16\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e习近平会见越南总理范明政\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Xi Jinping meets with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh 2023-06-28, PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy contrast, only 10 cases of Eliteness are found in the IBD headlines,which are mainly construed in elite organizations such as Dagong Global Credit Rating Co.Ltd, think tank,elite institutions such as China and the Eurasian Economic Union,Ministry of Commerce,elite meetings such as the China Export Commodities Fair, Canton Fair, Meteorological Summit Forum.The contrast in constructing Eliteness may attribute to the different political positioning between PD and IBD. The primary mission of PD is to promote national policies, showcasing the country\u0026rsquo;s image, and conveying official voices. Including national leaders in headlines is the most effective way to attract attention and highlight the political significance and importance of events,while IBD prioritizes providing business services and promoting economic and trade cooperation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is assumed that IBD will construct more Timeliness to provide the up-to-date economic and financial information since it\u0026rsquo;s a market-oriented economic newspaper. Unexpectedly, PD demonstrated greater Timeliness than IBD.This discrepancy is closely related to the construction of Eliteness since the activities and events that Chinese political elites engaged in will be reported very quickly, which contributes to the construction of Timeliness. (Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e17\u003c/span\u003e.) By contrast, Timeliness is constructed mainly through statistic reports in IBD headlines.(Example 18.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 17\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e习近平主席新年贺词引发国际人士热议\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(President Xi Jinping\u0026rsquo;s New Year address has sparked heated discussion among international Figs.\u0026nbsp;2023-\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e01\u003c/span\u003e-03,PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExample 18.1-\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e月中国对外非金融类直接投资1360.4亿元\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(China\u0026rsquo;s non-financial outward direct investment reached 136.04\u0026nbsp;billion yuan from January to February. 2023-03-28,IBD\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe news value of Impact is significantly more constructed in IBD (47.1%) than in PD (22.9%).The following two examples illustrate that China\u0026rsquo;s economic development has provided significant momentum for the stabilization and recovery of the global economy, offering greater development opportunities to the world. The BRI has infused vitality into the development and prosperity of partner countries.(Example \u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e19\u003c/span\u003e\u0026amp;20)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 19\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e为世界经济企稳复苏提供强大动能\u0026mdash;中外专家看好中国经济发展\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Providing strong momentum for the stabilization and recovery of the world economy \u0026mdash;Chinese and foreign experts optimistic about China's economic development 2023-01-30, PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 20\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; 为共建国家发展繁荣注入动力\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(The \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; initiative injects momentum into the development and prosperity of partner countries. 2023-06-26, PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eSemantic tags analysis of reporting\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn order to provide an overview of newsworthiness in such a large data-set as in this research, it is impossible to manage it manually as we did in the previous section. Computer-based method is then needed to deal with such a large amount of data. Key semantic tags are the most insightful for sketching out the newsworthiness (Potts, et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e). A specialized web-based tool Wmatrix for corpus analysis and comparison is used to generate a list of key semantic tags by comparing the two corpora reciprocally (Rayson, \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e). The results of the top five key semantic tags in PD are presented in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e, indicating that these five semantic fields appeared with unusually high frequency. O1 represents the observed frequency of this semantic field in PD corpus, O2 represents its observed frequency in the IBD corpus, %1 and %2 values indicate the relative frequency of this semantic field in the PD corpus and IBD corpus respectively, and ་ indicates that this semantic field appears more frequently in PD than in IBD. LL is the log-likelihood value, where a higher value indicates that this semantic field occurs more frequently in PD compared to IBD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab3\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 3\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKey semantic tags in the PD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth rowspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth rowspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSemantic tag\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn PD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn reference\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIBD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth rowspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLog\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003elikelihood\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eO1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e%1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eO2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e%2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe universe\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2793\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.36\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e484\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.13 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e498.91\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGreen issues\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e948\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.12\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e85\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.02 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e331.31\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGiving\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e7294\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.94\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2348\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.65 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e253.81\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCalm\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1157\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.15\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e183\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.05 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e234.77\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChange\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e15853\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.04\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5850\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1.62 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e234.67\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe dominant items tagged \u0026ldquo;The universe\u0026rdquo; are 世界(world)and its variant全世界(all over the world). Similar to the findings in the analysis above, PD tends to favor grand narratives. The two items along with its most prominent left-hand collocate 为(for) describe China\u0026rsquo;s development as providing more opportunities for global prosperity and progress in terms of Impact, using verbs such as, 提供(provide), 推进(advance),解决 (solve),贡献 (contribute).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eItems included in the semantic subcategory \u0026ldquo;Green issue\u0026rdquo;, such as 生态(ecology), 自然(nature), 系统(system), 保护区(protection zone) and positive collocates around them (e.g. graceful, fine,harmonious,superior,rich)try to convey such a message in terms of Positivity that the Chinese nation is a nation that respects and protects nature and China\u0026rsquo;s development is green and eco-friendly. Chinese determination to advance the protection of ecological environment is voiced through the newsworthiness of Superlativeness with intensified verbs, e.g. 加强(strengthen), 增强(enhance), 推进(advance), 扩大 (expand).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn an interrelated pattern, words semantically tagged as \u0026ldquo;Giving\u0026rdquo; are 人民(people), 贡献(contribution), 提供(supply), 倡议(initiative), describing the Impact of China\u0026rsquo;s development on the people all over the world. China\u0026rsquo;s development is always people-centered. China has contributed its share to world peace and development.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe most prominent item under the category of \u0026ldquo;Calm\u0026rdquo; is 和平(peace). Besides the Positivity the item constructs itself, Impact is also constructed through the verbs, such as, 倡导(advocate),维护(maintain),营造(build), 建设(construct),坚持(uphold), to stress China\u0026rsquo;s contribution and positive role in maintaining the world peace.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eItems tagged \u0026ldquo;Change\u0026rdquo;,for instance, 发展(development), 改善(improve),变(change),变化(transformation),seem to suggest that China\u0026rsquo;s development has substantially promoted the development of the world in terms of Positivity.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn comparison to the key semantic tags of PD Corpus in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e, the key semantic tags of IBD Corpus (in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e) appear more \u0026ldquo;business\u0026rdquo; at first glance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eItems tagged \u0026ldquo;Business:Generally\u0026rdquo;, such as, 贸易(trade), 商业(commerce) represent the smoothness and convenience in China\u0026rsquo;s trade with other countries in terms of Positivity. Another notable news value Superlativeness is constructed through the use of ordinal numbers,such as,第一(first), 第二(second),to characterize China as the largest or second largest trading partner of many countries or regions in the world. And this is often accompanied by the use of statistic numbers (e.g. a growth of 9.6%, 1.56 trillion yuan).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"char\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"char\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"char\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"char\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"char\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab4\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKey semantic tags in the IBD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth rowspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth rowspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSemantic tag\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn IBD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn reference\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth rowspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLog\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003elikelihood\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eO1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e%1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eO2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e%2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBusiness: Generally\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4318\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1.20\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3018\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.39 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2280.20\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBusiness: Selling\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2607\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.72\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2190\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.28 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1043.92\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMoney and pay\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2584\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.72\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2791\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.36 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e620.20\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNumbers\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e12757\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.54\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e22048\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2.84 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e380.70\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuantities: many/much\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1391\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.39\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1571\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\"+\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e0.20 +\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"char\" char=\".\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e297.79\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next business subcategory mainly consists of items, such as, 出口(export), 进口(import),销售(sell),产品(products),which depict China\u0026rsquo;s prosperous and continuously expanding trade with other countries by means of Superlativeness (e.g. 18.1 trillion yuan, a growth of 18%,760,000 tons,128\u0026nbsp;billion US dollars).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSimilar to the semantic tags in previous category, the subcategory of \u0026ldquo;Money and pay\u0026rdquo; prominently used many numbers, quantifiers to create a newsworthiness of Superlativeness, showing the vitality and resilience of China\u0026rsquo;s Trade (e.g. ten times,1.475\u0026nbsp;million TEUs,over 50,000 varieties).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the subcategory of \u0026ldquo;Numbers\u0026rdquo;, Timeliness is constructed through the temporal references (e.g. the year of 2022, January 29,mid-October) to show the continuously updated information of China trade.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eItems tagged \u0026ldquo;Quantities: many/much\u0026rdquo;, such as, 很多(many), 越来越多(more),愈加(increasingly), 额外(extra) are used to indicate China expanding trade with other countries in terms of Superlativeness.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eCollocation analysis of\u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI)\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCollocation is \u0026ldquo;a way of understanding meanings and associations between words which are otherwise difficult to ascertain from a small-scale analysis of a single text\u0026rdquo; (Baker,2006:96) and collocation analysis \u0026ldquo;can indeed pinpoint repeated constellations of specific news values constructed around entities\u0026rdquo; (Potts, et al., \u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e:161). This study intends to use collocation analysis to find out the news values constructed in the immediate co-text of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI). The corpus software AntConc 4.3.1 is used to generate the list of collocates as mentioned before.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt shows there are 4970 occurrences of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; (BRI) and 202 collocates in PD Corpus by searching the window span of +/-5 with a minimum frequency of 3. We only analyze the top 100 collocates as listed below(Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab5\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 5\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTop 100 collocates of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; (BRI) in PD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCategory\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCollocates\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNouns\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e共建(joint construction), 倡议(initiative), 质量(quality), 联盟(alliance), 合作(cooperation), 高峰(summit), 周年(anniversary), 框架(framework), 年(year), 成果(achievements), 行动(action), 文件(document), 沿线(along the Belt and Road), 开幕式(opening ceremony), 原则(principle), 媒体(media), 现代化(modernization), 伙伴(partner), 报告(report), 中国(China), 生态(ecology), 发展(development), 技术(technology), 实践(practice), 新闻(news), 产业(industry), 国际联盟(international alliance), 市场(market), 文化(culture), 源泉(source), 征管(tax collection and administration), 全国(the whole country), 经济(economy), 安全(security), 研讨会(seminar), 公司(company), 路(path), 备忘录(memorandum), 圈(circle), 智(intelligence), 大会(conference), 各方(all parties)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVerbs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e提出(propose), 来(go), 推动(promote), 举办(hold), 发布(release), 参与(participate), 是(be), 签署(sign), 取得(achieve), 建设(construct), 建(build), 证明(prove), 改革(reform), 互联(interconnect), 首倡(first propose), 展望(prospect), 互通(interflow), 融入(integrate), 推进(advance), 比(compared to ), 进入(enter), 表示(say), 源自(originate from), 发起(initiate), 回眸(retrospect), 走(go), 谅解(understand), 保护(protect), 评价(evaluate), 支持(support)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdjectives\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e高(high), 国际(international), 廉洁(incorruptible), 丰硕(fruitful), 绿色(green), 当地(local), 蓬勃(vigorous), 积极(active), 立体(three-dimensional), 重要(important), 从无到有(from scratch)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOthers\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e第三(third), 届(session), 八(eight), 十( ten), 下(under), 万(ten thousand), 等(etc.), 共(together), 一(one), 项(item), 和(and), 为(for), 同(with)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e5\u003c/span\u003e shows that the top 100 collocates of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; (BRI) include many words pertaining to meeting (summit, anniversary,opening ceremony,seminar,conference,all parties,memorandum,hold,release,session), which is characteristic of the reporting of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI) in the year of 2023, when is the 10th anniversary of the BRI\u0026rsquo;s proposal. It is assumed that many meetings will be held to celebrate this event including The third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which was the most grand event and the highest-level international event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the BRI in that year. Proximity and Timeliness are thus established through reference to the meeting (third, ten, year, China, the whole country). Most nouns seem unrelated to news values, referring to the themes of the meeting: ecology, development, technology, practice, industry, international alliance, market, and culture. Some verb collocates construct the news values of Impact (promote,advance,achieve, protect, support). Most adjective collocates represent a positive image of the BRI constructing Positivity through qualifiers (high, incorruptible,fruitful, green, vigorous, positive, important) with \u003cem\u003ehigh\u003c/em\u003e often co-occurs with \u003cem\u003equality\u003c/em\u003e. Looking into the numerals, we found that 万(ten-thousand) constructs Superlativeness to highlight the huge contribution of the \"Belt and Road\" to the world development as shown below.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample 21\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e到2030年, 共建 \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;有望帮助全球760\u003cstrong\u003e万\u003c/strong\u003e人摆脱极端贫困, 使3200\u003cstrong\u003e万\u003c/strong\u003e人摆脱中度贫困.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(By 2030, jointly building the \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; is expected to help lift 7.6\u0026nbsp;million people worldwide out of extreme poverty and enable 32\u0026nbsp;million to escape moderate poverty. 2023-10-31, PD)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe term \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI) occurred 2528 times in the IBD Corpus and 94 collocates were found within the window span of +/-5 with a minimum frequency of 3(Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e6\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is unsurprising that the collocates in IBD corpus exhibit many similarities in constructing news values of Proximity, Timeliness, Positivity, and Superlativeness. Considering that both are mainstream official media outlets in China, IBD maintains a high level of consistency with PD in reporting on major political events, albeit with a shift in focus. They share a large number of words particularly in the categories of verbs\u003cem\u003e(\u003c/em\u003epropose, sign, promote, advance),adjectives (high, active, important) and Other(session, third, eight, ten). It is interesting to note that half of the top ten noun collocates appear in a similar order in the two media (joint construction, initiative, quality, cooperation, anniversary). A prominent divergence is found in the use of proper nouns of personal names (e.g. Qi Xin,Xi Jinping). Qi Xin is the Director of the BRI Economic and Trade Cooperation Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce. Consequently, Eliteness is constructed through the reference to Qi Xin and President Xi Jinping. Upon closer examination of the noun collocates, it appears that IBD constructs greater Timeliness and Proximity by incorporating more temporal words (year, this year, October) and more business-related terms (industry, foreign trade, yuan, dollars, products, logistics, freight trains, industrial chain).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"colspec\" align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab6\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 6\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTop 94 collocates of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI) in IBD Corpus\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCategory\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCollocates\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNouns\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e共建(joint contribution), 倡议(initiative), 国家 (country), 沿线 (along the Belt and Road), 质量 (quality), 周年 (anniversary), 合作 (cooperation), 高峰 (summit), 建设 (construction), 文件 (document), 备忘录 (memorandum), 谅解 (understanding), 论坛 (forum), 年 (year), 产品 (product), 美元 (dollar), 框架 (framework), 产业 (industry), 外贸 (foreign trade), 经济 (economy), 能源 (energy), 行动 (action), 技术 (technology), 旗舰 (flagship), 地区 (region), 非金融 (non-financial), 元 (yuan), 景 (scenery), 规划 (plan), 班列 (freight train), 大家庭 (big family), 底色 (background color), 物流 (logistics), 产业链 (industrial chain), 祈欣(Qi Xin), 原则 (principle), 工笔画 (fine brushwork), 会 (meeting), 出口 (export), 理论 (theory), 科技 (science and technology), 丛书 (book series), 投资 (investment), 创新 (innovation), 十月 (October), 展望 (prospect), 农业 (agriculture), 政策 (policy), 习近平(Xi Jinping), 领域 (field), 之际 (occasion), 汽车 (automobile), 今年 (this year)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVerbs\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e共建 (jointly contribute), 提出 (propose), 签署 (sign), 走 (go), 参与 (participate), 推进 (advance), 融入 (integrate), 推动 (promote), 建 (build), 开拓 (explore), 加入 (join), 深耕 (cultivate deeply), 提升 (enhance), 期盼 (look forward to), 深受 (be deeply influenced)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdjectives\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e高 (high), 深 (deep), 实(substantive), 大 (big), 重要 (important), 积极 (active)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOther\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e届 (session), 与 (with), 在 (in), 对 (to), 下 (under), 随着 (along with), 十 (ten), 第三 (third), 八 (eight), 亿 (hundred million)、一 (one), 为 (for), 等 (etc.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe present discursive news values analysis shows how news values are constructed in the reporting on the BRI by a party newspaper and an industry newspaper in China. Overall, it reveals that PD and IBD demonstrate some similarities in constructing newsworthiness since both of them are official newspapers and represent the Chinese government.\u0026ldquo;Chinese media are influenced by collective culture, socialist harmonious values, and other ideological consciousness, resulting in a tendency toward homogenized coverage of the BRI \u0026rdquo;(Li and Wu, 2024:17). However, notable discrepancies are also found in the prominence of news values, as well as in the discourse strategies and linguistic devices that construct them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNews values in headlines.\u003c/strong\u003e Both PD and IBD construct Positivity, Proximity, and Superlativeness predominantly in headlines, highlighting \u0026ldquo;China opportunity\u0026rdquo; and economic benefits that BRI brought to the world. The \u003cem\u003ePeople\u0026rsquo;s Daily\u003c/em\u003e often employs \u0026ldquo;positive rhetorical discourse to guide public opinion\u0026rdquo; (Wang and Du, 2019:75). However, a discrepancy found in constructing Positivity is that PD is more prone to promoting national ideology and emphasizing on the prosperity of economy. \u0026ldquo;News reports on the BRI in PD are mostly based on the theme of \u0026ldquo;a community with a shared future for mankind\u0026rdquo;, and give a positive interpretation of the BRI on a macro level ( Wang and Mao ,2018:34). Whereas IBD covers more reports on international trade and investment policies, with an emphasis on the resilience of trade. This discrepancy can be explained by their distinct positioning.As the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the CPC, the primary mission of PD is to publicize the party's theories and policies and strengthen national consciousness; whereas the IBD, as an economic newspaper under the administration of the Ministry of Commerce, focuses more on trade and economic information and international business exchanges, with a relatively diluted ideological tone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIBD shows a bit higher percentage of Proximity than PD, which may be accounted for by the fact that IBD primarily serves business decision-making which evokes a more urgent need for Proximity.In spite of similar percentage of Superlativeness in PD and IBD, they adopt distinctive ways of reporting. IBD adopts a micro- perspective focusing more on the economy, trade, mutual benefits between China and the BRI countries, whereas PD adopts a much more macro-perspective stressing on the grand narrative of \u0026ldquo;China opportunity\u0026rdquo;. As found in previous research, the reporting perspective of PD tends to be macro and abstract, with relatively flexible and diverse narrative methods (Wang and Mao, 2018:34)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA notable contrast is observed in constructing Impact and Timeliness, particularly Eliteness. PD constructed far more Eliteness in headlines through reference to elite figures, while Eliteness is seldom constructed in IBD headlines and often constructed through reference to elite organizations.The PD as the party newspaper, focuses on the political dimension, highlighting the diplomatic activities and policy guidance of national leaders,thus constructing Eliteness. Whereas the IBD, as an economic media outlet, pays more attention to commercial cooperation and economic and trade exchanges, hence elite organizations appear more frequently.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile the news value of Impact is significantly more constructed in IBD than in PD, PD demonstrated greater Timeliness than IBD, which focuses more on reporting the economic and trade cooperation achievements and long-term impact brought by the BRI, while as a comprehensive party newspaper PD emphasizes the Timeliness of policy dynamics and leadership activities of national leaders to reflect the advancement rhythm of national strategies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNews values in the body report and collocates.\u003c/strong\u003e In the semantic tags analysis, it is found that PD put more attention on the key areas of The Universe, Green issues, Giving, Calm and Change. In contrast, IBD emphasizes more on business and financial areas, such as Business:Generally, Business:Selling, Money and pay, Numbers, Quantities:many/much.This finding demonstrates respective emphases in the reporting of PD and IBD. PD is dedicated to promoting national policies and guidelines, whereas IBD focuses on facilitating the exchange of economic and trade information. As a consequence, PD constructs more newsworthiness of Positivity and Impact highlighting the positive impact and benefits that BRI brings to China and other countries, whereas IBD constructs more Superlativeness and Timeliness emphasizing the vitality and resilience in the BRI trade.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe news values constructed by the top 100 collocates of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI) in both media exhibit some similarity. Proximity, Timelines, Positivity, and Superlativeness are the four dominant news values for both newspapers. However, the news values of Proximity and Timeliness are more prominent in IBD,which may be explained by the fact that IBD has higher requirements for details in economic and trade information, such as geographical location, project progress, and business dynamics.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDespite the separate analysis above, it finds that Positivity, Superlativeness and Impact are established throughout the news reporting, which indicates that certain news values might be constructed on a specific event, such as the BRI in our case.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary.\u003c/strong\u003e Significant differences are found in constructing news values around the global event \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo; (BRI) between party newspaper and industry newspaper in China. While PD constructs more Timeliness, especially Eliteness in the headlines, IBD constructs more Impact and Proximity. In the body part, PD constructs more newsworthiness of Positivity and Impact, whereas IBD constructs more Superlativeness and Timeliness. In the collocates of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI), Proximity and Timeliness are more prominent in IBD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs the mouth piece of Chinese government, the party newspaper PD is dedicated to promoting China\u0026rsquo;s national ideology and policies, which are often embedded in the speeches of national leaders or important activities that they participated in. The reporting of those, especially represented as headlines, will construct Eliteness and Timiliness. Besides, PD often takes a grand narrative in the reporting, emphasizing the prosperity of trade in order to unite the people and boost their confidence in the BRI. In contrast, the industry newspaper IBD puts more emphasis on the influence of the BRI on the world economy, positioning itself as the facilitator of trade in the countries along the BRI route, for instance, providing information. Thus Impact and Proximity are more prominent in the headlines of IBD.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePD paid much more attention to the semantic domain of \u0026ldquo;universe\u0026rdquo;, highlighting the positive Impact of \u0026ldquo;China opportunity\u0026rdquo; on the world development, in which a great deal of Positivity and Impact were established.In contrast, IBD focused more on the \u0026ldquo;business\u0026rdquo; domain, stressing on the massive scale of trade and the robust vitality of the BRI through numbers and statistics. Thus Superlativeness and Timeliness are more prominent in the reporting of IBD. Similar to the findings in the headlines, Proximity and Timeliness are more prominent in the collocates of \u0026ldquo;一带一路\u0026rdquo;(BRI)in IBD since it has a more urgent need of providing trade information as an industry newspaper.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis study has revealed the similarities and discrepancies of two Chinese mainstream media in constructing newsworthiness in their reporting on the BRI.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cul\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe contributions of this study lie in four folds. First, unlike most previous comparative studies carried out cross-culturally, this study is undertaken within a single language, Chinese, which is relatively under-explored. Second, it has demonstrated the application of Chinese semantic tags analysis in DNVA studies, proving that it is an effective method to identify the key areas wherein newsworthiness is constructed. Third, A wide range of events or issues have been explored within the framework of DNVA, including national day, maritime security, Hurricane Katrina, Australia\u0026rsquo;s forest fires, Chinese tennis player Li Na etc., but global topics such as the \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; Initiative, might be discussed within the DNVA framework for the first time, offering a framework to enhance people\u0026rsquo;s understanding of the BRI. Finally, it significantly deepened our understanding of how media positioning, say, party newspaper and industry newspaper, affects the reporting of different media outlets on the same event, particularly in terms of newsworthiness.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ul\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis study has several limitations. First, we only analyzed news values established in the immediate context of references to \u0026ldquo;BRI\u0026rdquo; in top 100/94 collocates, rather than analyzing complete texts and all collocates.Secondly,We analyzed only the written texts (excluding news photographs and other visuals) because of a deficiency in the data source, and utilized a limited number of computational techniques, such as POS tags, key semantic tags, and collocation.The future study may continue to explore the potential of key semantic tag analysis in DNVA studies, particularly in a Chinese context. Additionally, comparing a Chinese party newspaper with a metropolitan newspaper is encouraged, as it will yield more insightful findings than comparing two Chinese official newspapers. Finally, a diachronic study of the newsworthiness constructed around the BRI over time may deepen our understanding of how themes and frameworks evolve through the construction of different news values.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eFunding\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe acknowledge receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: The Social Science Fund of Fujian Province [福建社会科学基金项目] [grant number FJ2022BF023].\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eHan CX originally conceptualized the project and conducted data analyses and the primary framing of the original manuscript. He J substantially contributed to the project and refinement of the manuscript. All authors agreed and consented to the publication.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eData Availability\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe datasets analyzed during the current study are available in Appendix 2 and Appendix 3. Appendix 2 demonstrates the news reporting data of People\u0026rsquo;s Daily, and Appendix 3 shows the news reporting data of International Business Daily.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAn S, Liang X (2018) Framing China\u0026rsquo;s Image in U.S. News: A Study of Belt and Road Forum Coverage by American Mainstream Media. J Harbin Inst Technol 20(2):82\u0026ndash;88\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAnthony L (2024) AntConc (Version 4.3.1) [Computer Software]. Waseda University,Tokyo, Japan. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/AntConc\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/AntConc\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBaker P (2006) Using corpora in discourse analysis. Continuum, London/New York\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBarnhurst KG, Nerone J (2001) The form of news: A history. Guilford, New York\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBednarek M, Caple H (2012) Value added: Language, image and news values. Discourse Context Media 1(2\u0026ndash;3):103\u0026ndash;113\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBednarek M, Caple H (2017) The discourse of news values: How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford University Press, New York\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBednarek M, Caple H, Huan C (2021) Computer-based analysis of news values: a case study on national day reporting. Journalism Stud 22(6):702\u0026ndash;722\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBell A (1991) The Language of news media. Blackwell, Oxford\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCaple H, Bednarek M (2013) Delving into the discourse:Approaches to news values in journalism studies and beyond[R]. University of Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCaple H, Huan C, Bednarek M (2020) Multimodal news analysis across cultures. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eChen C, Liu R (2024) Discrepancies in the newsworthiness of maritime security in Chinese and US media outlets: a corpus-based discursive news values analysis. Humanit Social Sci Commun 11(1):1\u0026ndash;12\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eChen C, Liu R (2023) Confucius in The Times from 1785 to 2019: a diachronic news discourse analysis of newsworthiness. Humanit Social Sci Commun 10(1):1\u0026ndash;13\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eChen C, Liu R (2024) Discrepancies in the newsworthiness of maritime security in Chinese and US media outlets: a corpus-based discursive news values analysis. Humanit Social Sci Commun 11(1):1\u0026ndash;12\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eChu J, Hassan Z, Sikandar SM (2025) The framing of the BRI in Indo-Pakistani media. Humanit Social Sci Commun 12(1):1\u0026ndash;10\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHarcup T, D O\u0026rsquo;neill (2017) What is News? News Values Revisited (Again). Journalism Stud 18(12):1470\u0026ndash;1488\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHou YZ, Cai SL (2018) A framing analysis of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in Hong Kong mainstream newspapers: Case studies of South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Economic Times, and Ming Pao. Mod Communication (Journal Communication Univ China) 40(10):85\u0026ndash;89\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eKuteleva A, Vasiliev D (2020) China\u0026rsquo;s BRI in Russian media: Politics of narratives, images, and metaphors. Eurasian Geogr Econ 62(5\u0026ndash;6):582\u0026ndash;606\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLi DF, Wu K (2024) Corpus-based area studies: A topic modeling analysis of BRI coverage in Chinese and American mainstream media. Computer-Assisted Foreign Lang Educ, (4):10\u0026ndash;17\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLiu GB, Zhang XL (2020) An analysis of attitudinal resources in Chinese media\u0026rsquo;s coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative: A case study of China Daily. J Xi\u0026rsquo;an Int Stud Univ 28(2):15\u0026ndash;21\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMolek-Kozakowska K (2013) Towards a pragma-linguistic framework for the study of sensationalism in news headlines. Discourse Communication 7(2):173\u0026ndash;197\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNie H (2019) The Belt and Road Initiative in Malaysian Chinese Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis Based on News Reports from Sin Chew Daily. Young Journalists (30):47\u0026ndash;49\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePotts A, Bednarek M, Caple H (2015) How can computer-based methods help researchers to investigate news values in large datasets? A corpus linguistic study of the construction of newsworthiness in the reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Discourse Communication 9(2):149\u0026ndash;172\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRayson P (2008) From key words to key semantic domains. Int J Corpus Linguistics 13(4):519\u0026ndash;549\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRayson P, Berridge D, Francis B (2004) Extending the Cochran rule or the comparison of word frequencies between corpora. In: Purnelle G, Fairon C and Dister A (eds) Le Poids des Mots: Proceedings of the 7th international conference on statistical analysis of textual data (JADT 2004). Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, pp. 926\u0026ndash;936\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRen Z, Zhou L (2023) Discourse strategies in mainstream media\u0026rsquo;s international reporting on the Belt and Initiative. News Tide, (8):7\u0026ndash;9\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRichardson J (2007) Analyzing newspapers. An approach from critical discourse analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eShi K, Jin S (2021) Malaysian media representations of the Belt and Road Initiative: A transitivity perspective. Foreign Lang Res 38(5):24\u0026ndash;32\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eShirk SL (2011) Changing media, changing China. Oxford University Press, Oxford\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSun YZ, Jiang L (2017) Belt and Road in Australian Mainstream Media [J]. Modern Communication, 2017,39(04):37\u0026ndash;41\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;84\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTong B, Chen X (2014) Dictionary of journalism and communication. Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, Beijing\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eVan Djik TA (1998) Ideology: A multidisciplinary Approach. Sage, London/Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWang RL, Mao YX (2018) A study on national image construction in People\u0026rsquo;s Daily (Overseas Edition): A case study of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Media, (17):33\u0026ndash;36\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWang SQ, Du SY (2019) A study on the framing of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in People\u0026rsquo;s Daily Overseas Edition. Young Journal, (2), 74\u0026ndash;75\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWang XK (2018) A study of U.S. mainstream media coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative\u0026mdash;Case studies of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Youth Journal, (6):87\u0026ndash;88\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWu MH, Wang LF (2021) An analysis of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in Pakistani mainstream media. Youth Journal, (10):104\u0026ndash;105\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eXie ZH (2023) Shaping and reflecting: Regional media representation and pathway selection of national discourse\u0026mdash;A framing analysis of ASEAN countries\u0026rsquo; coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative. Journalism Enthus, (10): 51\u0026ndash;55\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eYang H, Van Gorp B (2023) A frame analysis of political-media discourse on the BRI: evidence from China, Australia, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Camb Rev Int Affairs 36(5):625\u0026ndash;651\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eYu H, Liu S (2023) The pandemic in our country, the pandemic in their countries: news values and media representation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journalism Stud 24(10):1257\u0026ndash;1276\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZhang L, Caple H (2021) The newsworthiness of Li Na\u0026mdash;A critical comparative analysis of Chinese and international news media. Lang Communication 77:70\u0026ndash;80\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZhang L, Wu D (2017) Media representations of China: A comparison of China daily and financial times in reporting on the BRI. Crit Arts 31(6):29\u0026ndash;43\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZhang Y, Yi D (2022) A comparative metaphor analysis of Belt and Road Initiative coverage in British and American mainstream media. Computer-Assisted Foreign Lang Educ, (4):58\u0026ndash;64\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZhou C, Kang J (2016) How do mainstream American media construct a media framework for the Belt and Road [J]. Mod Communication 38(06):163\u0026ndash;165\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZou L (2023) News Construction of the Belt and Road Initiative by German Media \u0026mdash; Based on a Framework Analysis of News from Eight Mainstream German Media (2013\u0026ndash;2022). Journal of Journalism and Communication, 2023,76(01):57\u0026ndash;75\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"Corpus-assisted discourse analysis, Discursive news values analysis (DNVA), BRI, Chinese main stream media","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7621200/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7621200/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eThis paper compares how newsworthiness is constructed in reporting on the \u0026ldquo;Belt and Road\u0026rdquo; Initiative (BRI) by a party newspaper and an industry newspaper in China. Using corpus linguistic methods and a discursive news values analysis framework (DNVA), it examines news values through POS tags, key semantic tags, and collocations in two news outlets: \u003cem\u003ePeople\u0026rsquo;s Daily\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eInternational Business Daily\u003c/em\u003e. Despite the similarities in constructing Positivity, Proximity and Superlativeness in headlines, highlighting \u0026ldquo;China opportunity\u0026rdquo; and economic benefits, notable discrepancies are observed in constructing Impact and Timelinesss, particularly Eliteness, which is far more constructed in PD through elite figures. While PD constructs more Positivity and Impact highlighting the prosperity and positive impact of BRI on both China and other countries, IBD constructs more Superlativeness and Timeliness emphasizing the vitality and resilience in the BRI trade in the body report. This study reveals that the patterns in constructing newsworthiness differ significantly between the party newspaper and the industry newspaper, as they aim to meet the expectations of their distinct target audiences.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"The newsworthiness in the coverage of the “Belt and Road” Initiative :a comparative analysis of Chinese party newspaper and industry newspaper","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-12-05 15:14:17","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7621200/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"decision","content":"Revision requested","date":"2026-02-20T23:02:41+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-02-16T08:33:44+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"328932558286719170777432456825293736112","date":"2026-01-22T08:02:06+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2026-01-03T16:15:21+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"257527620557801391175063000536262660363","date":"2026-01-03T13:57:37+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2025-12-03T14:42:50+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvited","content":"","date":"2025-10-16T11:41:01+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2025-10-07T09:46:33+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2025-09-25T09:47:04+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","date":"2025-09-15T13:32:33+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"6c0be267-7e60-475e-bf70-41f184823e95","owner":[],"postedDate":"December 5th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"under-review","subjectAreas":[{"id":59097099,"name":"Humanities/Cultural and media studies"},{"id":59097100,"name":"Social science/Cultural and media studies"},{"id":59097101,"name":"Humanities/Language and linguistics"},{"id":59097102,"name":"Social science/Language and linguistics"},{"id":59097103,"name":"Social science/Politics and international relations"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-03-06T15:23:15+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-12-05 15:14:17","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7621200","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7621200","identity":"rs-7621200","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}