Framing Yunnan Tourism: An Analysis of News Coverage in People's Daily : Examining the Shift in Contexts of Yunnan Tourism in People's Daily Over Time

Abstract: This study examines how People's Daily portrayed tourism and minorities in its news coverage. The study includes both quantitative and qualitative components. The objective of the quantitative section is to determine in what contexts tourism appears in news reporting and whether the presence of these contexts has changed since the 1999 World Horticultural Exposition in Kunming. The objective of the qualitative section was to determine how the image of minorities is constructed in some of the identified media contexts and to what extent and in what ways the news reporting can be considered to have been stereotyped. The theoretical framework is based on critical discourse theory approaches. The results of the quantitative analysis showed that tourism appears in eight different media contexts, with the economic link being by far the most common. The results of the quantitative analysis also indicate that tourism reporting increased after the 1999 World Horticultural Exposition, but a strong correlation could not be established. The results of the qualitative analysis indicate that news coverage may be influenced to some extent by minority stereotypes.