Farming South Sudan : The portrayal of South Sudan in international news

Abstract

The objective of this research is to find out how South Sudan is portrayed in the international news by three news broadcasters, Al Jazeera from Qatar, the BBC from Britain, and CNTV from China in order to study the similarities and differences in news report topic, tone, framing, and source selection by news broadcasters from different cultural and political backgrounds. Also the roles of public diplomacy and national interest in international news reports on South Sudan are studied. This research includes hard news reports published on the websites of the three news broadcasters. The news reports are manually downloaded from the archives of the news broadcasters’ websites. The studied period is the first year of South Sudan’s independence, July 9, 2011 to July 9, 2012. Sample size is 157 news reports. The sample includes only hard news reports in text form; editorials, opinion pieces, or soft news such as sports and entertainment reports are not included. In addition, video, audio, and picture material are not included. This research uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The theoretical framework of this research is based on the Framing theory. Quantitative content analysis is performed in order to test four hypotheses to find out the amount of coverage South Sudan receives from the three broadcasters and the topics, tones, frames and source selections of the published news reports. Qualitative textual analysis is performed to answer four research questions in order to study the overall portrayal of South Sudan in the news reports, how the portrayal changes over the period of one year, how visible public diplomacy and national interest are in the news reports, and how visible Western journalistic influences are on CNTV’s news reporting. The hypothesis testing reveals that the BBC covers South Sudan more extensively than Al Jazeera or CNTV, but CNTV carries more positive reports on South Sudan than the BBC or Al Jazeera. The BBC and Al Jazeera focus mostly on conflicts in their reporting on South Sudan, whereas CNTV focuses mostly on political and economic development in South Sudan and conciliatory processes between Sudan and South Sudan. All Three broadcasters rely mostly on elite sources, whether government officials and representatives or independent elites such as the United Nations. However, Al Jazeera and the BBC give more space for independent elite sources than CNTV. Textual analysis reveals that the news reports of all three broadcasters provide very similar overall image of South Sudan: the country is portrayed as a poor and underdeveloped run by a weak and corrupt government unable to develop the country and improve the lives of the citizens. The portrayal does not change over the studied period of one year, and public diplomacy and national interest make clear appearances in the news reports throughout the studied period. The main interest in the news reports is clearly South Sudan’s oil reserves, which together with the frequent use of political and economic development frames and the lack of social development and human interest frames in the reports point to the direction of clear economic and commercial interests behind the new reports on South Sudan. In addition, the textual analysis reveals clear Western influences on CNTV’s news reporting in terms of news topic and source selection and news report structure which point to the direction of homogenization of news production, but differences in framing which points to the influence of public diplomacy and national interest on news framing.