Philip Merrill College of Journalism
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1629
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item WAR OF THE WORDS: STRATEGIC NARRATIVES IN NEWS COVERAGE OF COVID-19 TRAVEL POLICIES IN U.S. AND CHINESE MEDIA(2024) Wong, Ho Chun; Oates, Sarah S; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates how a global shock such as the COVID-19 pandemic creates challenges and opportunities for the projection of strategic narratives. Sitting on the intersection of the literature between journalism studies, political communication, and international relations, the strategic narratives framework provides a comprehensive approach to evaluate the stories told by political actors that are aimed at influencing perceptions. The author proposed a narrative-centric perspective to enrich the theoretical framework. While the conventional policy-centric perspective evaluates strategic narratives as a means to legitimize political behaviors, the narrative-centric perspective considers strategic narratives as tools for shaping the identities and characterization of political actors. A global crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity to frame pandemic responses in service of strategic goals. While political actors could legitimize policies in the name of health amid the lack of scientific authority in the infodemic where problematic information overwhelmed the global information environment, the situation also enabled political actors to frame policies such as travel restrictions for enhancing or renegotiating actor identities and worldviews. This dissertation analyzes the projection of COVID-19 strategic narratives and how they responded to foreign strategic narratives in the U.S. and Chinese English-language national news. A large sample of online news (N = 263,014) was sampled from the GDELT Coronavirus news dataset (The GDELT Project, 2020). This dissertation employed mixed methods of human-in-the-loop machine learning, conventional content analysis, and Granger causality tests to identify and examine strategic narratives, as well as evaluate the interactions between strategic narratives. Findings suggest that Chinese strategic narratives were responsive to offensive strategic narratives from the U.S. and depicted the U.S. as an immoral actor who intentionally smeared China. The U.S. reinforced the identity-level strategic narrative that China lacks transparency through issue-level strategic narratives about travel policies and virus origin. Two patterns of strategic narratives projection were found. Chinese strategic narratives maintained coherent storylines in the three years and between news outlets. They projected a clear Chinese story to the international audience but found it difficult to address the rapid changes in pandemic situations and policies. Meanwhile, strategic narratives from the U.S. were less coherent and were contested domestically between news outlets. Although it might have weakened a unified U.S. story, the flexibility allowed strategic narratives to transform and adapt to evolving pandemic realities. U.S. strategic narratives were able to frame stories about travel restrictions and virus origin as a manifestation of the lack of transparency from China. This dissertation demonstrated the feasibility of studying the dynamics of strategic narratives through a large dataset. The mixed method approach offered a thick analysis of strategic narratives and illustrated their interactions, thus consolidating the theoretical and methodological foundation for future research on strategic narratives contests.Item WHEN GLOBAL CONSPIRACY THEORIES BECOME LOCAL PROPAGANDA: THE INFLUENCE OF CHINA AND U.S. RIGHT-WING COVID-19 NARRATIVES ON TAIWAN(2023) Li, Wei-Ping; Oates, Sarah; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examined how foreign conspiracy theories propagated by authoritarian countries traverse national borders and are transformed into “news” in domestic media systems. It also assessed the impact of these conspiracy theories incorporated into the transnational information campaign as propaganda tools. Using the controversial COVID-19 virus-origin theory as a case study, this dissertation examined how the COVID-19 virus-origin conspiracy theories were constructed as propaganda by Chinese state media and how these conspiracy theories influenced the media in Taiwan, which has historically been the main target of China's information influence activities. After analyzing COVID-19 virus-origin narratives that contained conspiracy theories propagated by Chinese state media, the study found that the Chinese state media constructed its narratives about the origin of the COVID-19 virus by repeating consistent themes, recurrent terms, and assigning distinctive personalities to key protagonists in news events. The Chinese state media portrayed China as a team player in the international community and collaborated with the international community by sharing data openly. However, the United States and other Western nations attempted to contain the rise of China by attacking it with conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus. The Chinese narratives were mostly rejected by mainstream Taiwanese media. Although Taiwanese media mentioned some conspiracy theories promoted by Chinese state media, Taiwanese media were aware of Chinese propaganda and disinformation. They also viewed the disputes between China and the United States regarding the origin of the virus as a struggle for power between the two nations. Even though Taiwanese media and Chinese state media used identical terms to describe the same news events about the origin of the COVID-19 virus and highlighted the same protagonists, Taiwanese media presented narratives that were in stark contrast to Chinese media. The research concluded that Chinese state media had limited influence on Taiwanese media in the case of COVID-19 virus-origin narratives. Nonetheless, this study also uncovered a concerning trend: a number of Taiwanese media articles amplified conspiracy theories disseminated by right-wing American media outlets, such as the War Room, Newsmax, or overseas Chinese media organizations notorious for spreading disinformation. The improper use of foreign media as news sources is one of the vulnerabilities of Taiwanese media in the battle against foreign propaganda and conspiracy theories. This dissertation increased the understanding of the influence of conspiracy theories propagated by authoritarian regimes and identified elements crucial to their success or failure as propaganda tools. Moreover, it sheds light on the strengths and weaknesses of media systems in democratic nations when battling against foreign propaganda. The findings of this study are useful not only to Taiwan but also to democratic and open societies worldwide.