Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

The media can play a vital role in spreading and communicating environmental issues to the public. Previous research found that China has become increasingly open toward environmental news; however, social systems have the greatest power to influence news content in the hierarchical model. Hence, this paper assessed to what extent news content on pollution in China is produced under the influences of social systems. This study concludes that the Chinese media tend to favor topics which do not harm the government’s image, thus using more Chinese sources that tend to put a positive spin on new content by framing pollution as a natural and global problem. However, some local and commercial Chinese media and CCTV have more space to investigate pollution news and criticize the government as long as it is not extremely politically sensitive. Hence, this paper discussed the communist ideological forces in the social systems that have a huge impact on news content in China. Another finding is that since the opening of the market in China, some commercial media are somewhat influenced by a liberal ideology and serve as a watchdog. This does not mean the “Chinese government’s media control is dysfunctional”.