The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers

Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (xxxx) xxx

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The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers Qingyue Du a, Ziqiang Han b, c, *, 1 a

The College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, PR China School of Political Science and Public Administration, Shandong University, PR China c Center for Crisis Management Research, Tsinghua University, PR China b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 1 January 2019 Received in revised form 4 August 2019 Accepted 1 October 2019 Available online xxx

Media’s framing can affect the public’s opinion and policy debates. Investigating the media’s framing of nuclear energy in China, a country with ambitious nuclear development strategy instead of the trend of global phasing out, can contribute the broader understanding of the linkage between media and nuclear energy development. This paper analyzes the media frames of nuclear energy in China from 2000 to 2016 using reports in two national and two local newspapers. One thousand seventy-nine nuclear energy news reports were collected and coded for analysis using a constructed risk-benefit coding frame, and logit/logistic and ordinary least squares regression analysis methods were employed. The results demonstrate that the Chinese media tends to be supportive of nuclear energy and that the Fukushima accident, in 2011, has negatively impacted on the benefit frames and positively impacted on the risk frames. Moreover, national and local newspapers present different framing patterns. National newspapers tend to be more supportive while the local newspapers either frame nuclear energy through risk or keep silent. The public, media, and nongovernmental organizations are rarely mentioned in the news reports. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Handling Editor: Tomas B. Ramos Keywords: Nuclear Media frame China Risk Benefit Fukushima

1. Introduction Media discourse is an essential context for understanding the formation of public opinion and policy debates on controversial issues such as nuclear power (Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Ho and Kristiansen, 2019). After the 2011 Fukushima earthquaketsunami-nuclear accident, there is a global declining of public acceptance of nuclear energy (Kim et al., 2013). However, unlike the decline of nuclear energy preference in developed countries, such as Japan (Visschers and Siegrist, 2013), the United States of America (Yeo et al., 2014), Germany (Arlt and Wolling, 2016), the United Kingdom (Goodfellow et al., 2015), France (Szarka, 2013), and Switzerland (Kepplinger and Lemke, 2016), nuclear energy in China has been still in flourish. In this context, a study of Chinese media discourse on nuclear power can help us understand the discourse of

* Corresponding author. No.72 Haibin Road, Jimo, Qingdao, Shandong, 266237, PR China. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (Q. Du), [email protected] (Z. Han). 1 The first and the second author contributed equally to this paper.

nuclear power and the potential linkage between media frame and policy preference. ‘Framing’ is a social construction of reality (Scheufele, 1999) that refers to the process of conceptualizing, constructing, or reorienting an issue (Chong and Druckman, 2007). The concept is widely used in media and communication studies and practices, especially when controversial issues involved, such as climate change (Carvalho, 2007; Weingart et al., 2000), environmental and technological risks (Dunwoody and Peters, 1992). The processes of organizing and interpreting an idea or storyline adopted by mass media, and the selected and constructed perspectives of an issue are likely to affect audience’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviors (D’Angelo, 2002; Scheufele, 1999). As a technology with both benefits and risks, nuclear energy has attracted lots of competing discourses from its supporters and critics and has been controversial around the world (Ho and Kristiansen, 2019). As a proxy of public opinion (Neresini and Lorenzet, 2016) and a platform for delivering political voices (Starr, 2005), the media frame of nuclear energy can be examined, not only to provide insights to current framing theory but also to enable valuable understanding of policy debating around nuclear energy.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118695 0959-6526/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Du, Q., Han, Z., The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers, Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118695

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The trends and varied frames of nuclear energy discourse in the media have been identified. Historically, the tone of media coverage began fairly positively in the 1950s and then declined in the 1960s alongside environmental and social movements. Later the tone stabilized but declined again after nuclear accidents, including the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster (Kristiansen, 2017). The tones and frames adopted by media in different countries vary differently (Djerf-Pierre et al., 2016; Kepplinger and Lemke, 2016; Kristiansen, 2017; Park et al., 2016). For example, in the United States, the media tend to present nuclear energy in a sophisticated way: most commonly included are issues of public accountability, trust in authorities and politics, as well as evacuation, fear, and concern after accidents. Energy independence and cost-efficiency, nevertheless, are rarely discussed (Entman and Rojecki, 1993; Friedman, 2011; Friedman et al., 1992; Gamson and Modigliani, 1989; Koerner, 2014; Park et al., 2016; Watts and Maddison, 2012). In Europe, economic and energy frames, health and safety concerns and civil society frames are more widely adopted (Arlt and Wolling, 2016; Boumans et al., 2016; Djerf-Pierre et al., 2016; Julie Doyle, 2011; Kepplinger and Lemke, 2016; Neresini and Lorenzet, 2016; Renzi et al., 2017). In Asia, where nuclear energy is relatively preferred and supported by governments, media tend to characterize nuclear energy as more beneficial and less risky. This pattern can be found in China (Wang et al., 2014) and even in Japan after the Fukushima accident (Uchida et al., 2015) while South Korea tended to follow the same pattern before (Yun, 2012), but switched to the phase-out of nuclear power after the new political leadership since 2017 (Chung and Kim, 2018). In contrast to the considerable scholarly research of media coverage of nuclear power in North America and Europe, studies on the media frame of nuclear energy in Asia (Ho and Kristiansen, 2019), especially in China is limited. Considering the fact that the framing of nuclear energy demonstrates cultural variations between different countries (Djerf-Pierre et al., 2016; Kepplinger and Lemke, 2016; Kristiansen, 2017; Park et al., 2016), studies of media’s framing of nuclear energy in China is strongly needed. However, within the current literature, we only identified one paper that explored the media coverage of nuclear power in China, and it only analyzed the contents from two national state-owned newspapers (Wang et al., 2014). Though mass media in China is commonly regulated by the government and the Chinese Communist Party, some media agencies, especially local agencies, have become more market-oriented with the influence of marketization development, particularly toward nonpolitical issues (Fu et al., 2012; Shirk, 2011; Stockmann, 2013). Mass media is the primary source of nuclear energy-related information for the Chinese public (He et al., 2014), and the government-issued information, which is mainly delivered by state-owned media, is recognized as the most reliable information regarding nuclear power by the public (Fang, 2014). Therefore, this analysis of media discourse on nuclear energy that takes into account more content from both national and local newspapers can contribute significantly to framing theory as well as nuclear policy debates (Ho et al., 2019). Besides, China is one of the most ambitious countries in the world to develop nuclear energy. China is currently running 36 nuclear reactors that ranked fourth in the world, and with the largest number of planned nuclear reactors (IAEA, 2017). By the end of 2020, China aims to have the installed capacity to produce 58 million kilowatts energy from nuclear power, and will then be the country with the second largest number of nuclear reactors in the world (People’s Daily Online, 2017). Nuclear energy, considered as a green energy solution to climate change and air pollution in China (Zeng et al., 2016), is expected to attract $700 billion investment

over the next 25 years (Zheng, 2017). Since the inception of the nuclear power plant in China in the early 1990s, nuclear energy has been considered a preferred energy source by government. As a technology that was initially dominated by western developed countries, China quickly mastered nuclear energy and, as such, it is often associated with national pride (Wang et al., 2014; Zeng et al., 2016). Today, Chinese nuclear energy experts and companies are invited to develop nuclear power plants in other countries, such as Pakistan (Xinhua, 2017) and a new generation of nuclear power reactors are soon expected to be installed, which will be the world’s first next-generation reactor units (Stapczynski and Guo, 2017). Considering these facts of flourish of nuclear energy in China, understanding the role of media’s frame, which can affect public opinion and policy debate, is essential for nuclear energy policy development in other places around the world as well. Moreover, studies regarding the public’s attitudes toward nuclear energy in China have primarily focused on the residents around nuclear plants using questionnaire surveys methods, while the media’s voice is relatively neglected. Public attitudes toward nuclear energy are deeply rooted in ideology and “reluctant acceptance” is a typical response when energy security or climate change threats are mentioned (Corner et al., 2011; Pidgeon et al., 2008). Within China, public acceptance of nuclear power is relatively high when compared to western developed countries (He et al., 2014; Sun and Zhu, 2014), and the most typical response is “not in my backyard” (Sun et al., 2014). One public opinion survey conducted by the GlobeScan among 23,231 people in 23 countries in 2011 after the Fukushima accident demonstrated that only 13% of the respondents from China selected the “nuclear power is dangerous” choice, and that was the lowest in the surveyed countries, even lower than the pro-nuclear countries like the United States (14%) or the United Kingdom (15%) (Kim et al., 2014; “Opposition to Nuclear Energy Grows,” 2011). For the public, the perceived benefits and risks, and their trust in the government (Fang, 2014) are primary influencing factors, while knowledge, education and the like, are less influential (Wu, 2017). Besides, the very limited nuclear accidents like Fukushima can have a strong negative impact on public acceptance of and positive attitudes towards nuclear industry (Huang et al., 2013), but this effect may fade out in the long run (Zhu et al., 2016). For people living near nuclear power plants, distance is critical: people nearest the plants, who would be able to get compensation from nuclear companies, and those living far away from power plants are more supportive, while people who live on the periphery of potential nuclear radiation have the strongest negative opinion (Fang, 2014; Guo and Ren, 2017; Zeng et al., 2017). In order to fill the knowledge gap discussed above, this paper analyzes the media coverage (2000e2016) of nuclear energy in China from four newspapers. Two of them are national, more stateowned newspapers, and the other two are local, more marketoriented newspapers. Based on our discussion above, we hypothesize that: H1. In Chinese newspapers, the framing of nuclear energy is relatively positive, and it is seen as beneficial rather than risky; H2. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident changed the tone of the media’s framing: the risk frame increased after the accident while the benefit frame decreased; H3. There is a different pattern of framing between national/ state-owned and local/market-oriented newspapers; national newspapers promote beneficial frames while the local newspapers tend towards risk frames.

Please cite this article as: Du, Q., Han, Z., The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers, Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118695

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2. Method The general process of media frame studies is: (1) identifying an issue; (2) determining an initial set of coding frames from prior work; (3) setting the sources for coding and (4) conducting a pilot coding to refine the coding frames either by machine coding or human coding method, and (5) finally implementing the content analysis using the refined coding frame (Chong and Druckman, 2007). 2.1. Newspaper selection Four newspapers, the People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, Nanfang Daily (Southern Daily), and Southern Metropolis Daily were chosen as the data source for this analysis. They were chosen because they are all domestic newspapers in China, have national influence and wide circulation. For example, the People’s Daily is one of the top ten newspapers in the world, while the Southern Metropolis Daily’s comprehensive competitiveness ranks first in all the national metropolis daily newspapers in China (People’s Daily Online, 2017). Also, these four newspapers arguably reflect the differences between state-owned newspapers and market-oriented media agencies. The People’s Daily and Guangming Daily are both stateowned, locating in Beijing, and dominated by the Communist Party and central government. The People’s Daily, in particular, is the most authoritative and influential newspaper in China, delivering the most reliable opinions and policies from central government and political leaders (Dai et al., 2014). The other two newspapers, Nanfang Daily and Southern Metropolis Daily, are more market-oriented newspapers and have been competing for readership and advertising for many years (Fu et al., 2012). In addition, the location of Nanfang Daily and Southern Metropolis Daily is Guangdong Province which is not only the front line of reform in China but also has the earliest nuclear power plant and the most significant number of nuclear plants in China. Therefore, these four newspapers represent a limited variety of news media in terms of national/local, state-owned/market-oriented and thus, they are used as the data sources in this analysis. 2.2. Search strategy We used the newspaper archive database Wise Search, which is similar to the LexisNexis, to retrieve historical news. Wise Search is the most comprehensive Chinese media database, collecting more than 1,600 media resources from the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and the United States, with more than 150 million articles stored and more than 200,000 articles updated every day (Wise Search, 2017). Also, retrieved newspapers were double checked in the CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) newspaper database, which is the largest knowledge information provider in China covering both newspapers, patterns, dissertations and journal articles (CNKI, 2017). The Chinese characters “nuclear power (核电)”, “nuclear energy (核能)” and “nuclear (核)” were used as the search keywords, and 9,812 items were returned. After deleting the duplicates, 8,437 news reports were left. Two trained graduate students were hired to read and screen the news reports independently. The first round of screening was to check if the news should be included for further coding. If a news report covered nuclear energy use, any content referencing the development, construction or damage of nuclear power plants, and nuclear energy-related international cooperation, it was included. Reports related to nuclear weapons, medical use of radiation, or those that only had the characteristics of “核” (which means “core” rather than nuclear) were excluded. Both graduate students included 495 items as “Yes” and 6,209 items as

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“No” for further coding after the first round of screening. The 1,733 inconsistent items were discussed by the principal investigators and the two graduate student coders one-by-one to decide if they should be included (Fig. 1.). Finally, 1,079 news reports were included for content analysis: 273 items from the People’s Daily, 243 from Guangming Daily, 270 reports from Nanfang Daily and 293 from Southern Metropolis Daily Fig. 2. 2.3. Coding frame Generally, there are two approaches to identify frames: inductive (identifying the frames in the process of analyzing the texts) and deductive (obtaining frames from previous research, and examining these frames in the content analysis) (Claes H. Vreese, 2005). As this study deals with a specific issue, for the most part, we adopted the deductive approach by retrieving frames of nuclear energy in previous studies and then integrating these frames to generate our own coding frame. The whole article is the coding unit. The tone, content of frames, and stakeholders involved are the three key dimensions that should be considered in the media’s framing of nuclear power. The tone reflects various attitudes toward nuclear energy in the news; either positive, neutral, or negative or any mention of the nuclear energy as controversial (Kristiansen, 2017). The framing contents include the following dimensions: economic (industry and economic development opportunities, cost-beneficial efficient energy etc.), environmental (as a potential solution to climate change, clean or renewable energy, health threats, environment threats etc.), science and technology (e.g. high technology, or well developed technology that with less risk), safety and risk and political or civil society (e.g. anti-nuclear social movements, inequity of risks) (Bjorn Burscher et al., 2016; Culley et al., 2010; Djerf-Pierre et al., 2016; IAEA, 2017; Koerner, 2014; Park et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2014). Finally, stakeholders include the public, civil societies (NGOs), nuclear industries, experts, media, government agencies, and international nuclear associations, etc.(Uchida et al., 2015; Yun, 2012). After reviewing prior studies, we generated a benefit-risk within the frame of stakeholders. The benefit set includes (1) economic aspects, (2) the substitution of traditional energy like coal, (3) securing energy independence, (4) a solution to climate change, (5) green energy, while the risk set includes (1) nuclear accidents, (2) the perceived and factual potential threat to human health, (3) the perceived and factual potential radioactive contamination caused by accidents, waste, or power plants (Ganowski et al., 2018; Harris et al., 2018). The stakeholder set includes all potential stakeholders; the central government, local government, experts, industry, NGOs, media, public, and people living around nuclear plants as well as each individual’s responsibility for energy consumption. In addition, the overall attitude (positive, negative, or neutral), the characteristics of news reports (factual report or comment, domestic coverage or international coverage) were coded (see Table 1). 2.4. Coding process and intercoder reliability Two trained graduate students coded the 1,079 news reports: one majoring in communication studies and the other in public administration and public policy. As a first step, a pilot coding test that included 60 samples/articles was conducted by the two coders independently. Krippendorff’s alpha inter-coder reliability test was implemented after the pilot test, and the results (0.713) indicated acceptable reliability, which means the consistent degree of the coding results from the two coders is acceptable (Krippendorff, 2018). Then, the two coders reviewed the pilot coding disagreements one-by-one, as well as the agreements with the guide of the

Please cite this article as: Du, Q., Han, Z., The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers, Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118695

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Records identified through

Duplicate records

database searching

( N = 1375 )

( N = 9812 )

Records after duplicates removed ( N =8437 )

Coder 1 and Coder 2 both

Coder 1 and Coder 2 both

Coder 1 and Coder 2 had

selected “yes”

selected “no”

inconsistent results

( N = 495 )

( N =6209 )

( N =1733 )

After discussing inconsistent reports ( N = 1079 ) Fig. 1. Data collection and searching strategy.

State-G 90

Local-M-Market

79

80

Local-N-Government

70

State-P

60 50 46 40 30 20 10 0

26 27 24

29 11 10 7 7

19 8 6 6

23

22 11 10 4

16 20

16 14 13

7 8 3

18 24

7

27 28 19 13 16 13 11 10

31 28 27 22 21 24 23 22 22 21 21 15 13 18 15 7

5 5 6

3 3

17 18 14 7 2 3 3 2

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Fig. 2. Number of news reports (2000e2016).

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Table 1 Coding frames. Variables

Description

News type

1. Factual report: mainly focus on news facts; 0. Comment: editorial comments or reviews 1.Domestic: nuclear issues in China 2.International: nuclear topics from other countries rather than China 3.Both: both domestic and international 0.Unmarked: did not clarify 1.Positive: support nuclear energy 2.Negative: oppose nuclear energy 3.Netural: objectively described the benefit and risk of nuclear energy 0.Unmarked: did not show any attitude 1. Central government: mentioned China’s central government (1) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (2) National Energy Agency/Ministry of Power Industry (NEA) (3) National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) (4) Others: other central government agencies (0) Unmarked: did not mention any central government agency 2.Local government: mentioned provinces or lower government 3. Expert: experts’ opinions were used 4. Industry: mentioned nuclear power plants 5. NGO: NGOs’ opinions or activities mentioned 6. Media: discussed media’s role 7. Public: mentioned the public’s attitudes on nuclear energy 0. Unmarked: No stakeholders mentioned in the report 1.Positive: nuclear energy is good for economic development 2.Negative: nuclear energy is not good for economic development 0. Unmarked: did not mention economic dimension 1.Positive: nuclear energy is good for energy security/independence 2.Negative: nuclear energy cannot keep energy security/independence 0.Unmarked: did not mention about energy security 1. Alternative energy: nuclear can be the substitute for traditional energy like coal 0.Unmarked: did not mention any alternative energy 1.Positive: nuclear energy is a solution or part of a solution to climate change 2.Negative: nuclear energy cannot be a solution to climate change 0.Unmarked: did not mention climate change 1.High-tech: frame nuclear energy as a high and new technology 2.Well developed: frame nuclear as a well-developed technology 0.Unmarked: did not mention the technology aspect 1. Nuclear energy is a green energy 2. Nuclear energy accidents could cause pollution 3. Nuclear waste may cause environmental pollution 4. The nuclear plant may have radiation (though not true) that harm the environment 0.Unmarked: did not mention environment aspect 1. Emphasizing risk: mention nuclear accidents (1) Fukushima (2) Chernobyl (3) Three Mile Island (4) Others: other nuclear accidents without a name (0) Unmarked: did not mention any accident 2.Emphasizing safety: mentioned accident, but focus on the controllability 0.Unmarked: did not mention nuclear accidents 1.Threat: probably not good for human health 2. Not threaten: nuclear power plants do not threaten people’s health 0.Unmarked: did not mention human health issue 1.NIMBY: mentioned, “Not In My Back Yard.” 0.Unmarked: did not mention 1. An individual should take some responsibilities, use less energy 2. Enjoy comfort provided by lots of energy consumption 3.Balanced attitude toward energy use 0.Unmarked: did not mention energy consumption

Coverage

Attitude

Stakeholders

Economy

Energy security

Alternative energy Climate change

Technology

Environment

Nuclear accidents

Health

NIMBY Individual Energy Consumption

principal investigators and recoded another test set with 60 samples, and this time, the test result increased (0.893). Finally, all 1,079 news items were coded for analysis. 2.5. Data analysis We generated one dummy variable to represent a relation to the Fukushima nuclear accident; ‘zero’ indicating news reports before the Fukushima accident and ‘one’ indicating those after the accident. We began by comparing the distribution of news reports, both beneficial frames, and risky frames before and after the Fukushima accident using cross tables with a chi-square test. Furthermore, the

distribution of the four newspapers was also compared using a chisquare test. The chi-square test is used because they are categorical variables. Stakeholder involvements were discussed, but the distribution table is not reported here because it is outside the scope of this research. Then, three dependent variables were generated. The overall attitude was recoded as positive (1) or negative (0) (unclear, neutral, or opposite). The seven beneficial variables (economy, alternative energy, securing energy independence, a solution for climate change, high-technology, well-developed technology, and green energy) were recoded as dummy variables, with ‘one’ as a positive result, and the sum of the seven variables was used as the benefit frame score. Similarly, the risk frame score was calculated

Please cite this article as: Du, Q., Han, Z., The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers, Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118695

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from the sum of the recoded accident, health threat, and potential radioactive pollution from accident, waste, plant. The logit/logistic regression method was employed to estimate the effects of Fukushima accident, and the sources of news reports on the overall attitude because the overall attitude was a dummy variable (0/1). The OLS (ordinary least squares) regressions were adopted to estimate the effects on the benefit frame and risk frame, respectively because these two variables were considered as continuous scores. 3. Results 3.1. The trends and characteristics of news reports Over time, each of the four newspapers paid more attention to nuclear energy from 2004 and reported steadily until 2011 when the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred. In 2011, nuclear-related reports on Southern Metropolis Daily (referred to hereafter as Local-M-Market) and Nanfang Daily (referred to hereafter as Local-NGovernment) increased sharply, reaching 79 items (27.24% of the total 290 items) and 46 items (17.04% of the total 270 items), respectively (Fig. 2). Though the People’s Daily (referred to hereafter as State-P) and Guangming Daily’s (referred to hereafter as State-G) reports on nuclear power also increased, they quickly stabilized. Over time, nuclear-related reports declined in all the four newspapers. However, the two local newspapers, Local-N-Government and Local-N-Market, continued to be more concerned with nuclear energy. Before 2005, the State-P had significantly more nuclear reports than the other three newspapers. Of the 1,079 news reports, 80.22% in State-P, 76.54% in State-G, 83.33% in Local-N-Government, and 81.57% in Local-M-Market were factual reports rather than commentary, and the factual/ commentary distribution among the four newspapers was not significant (P ¼ 0.258). There were more factual reports (85.67%) before the Fukushima accident than after (70.86%). The two national newspapers, State-P, and State-G tended to refer to both domestic and international nuclear issues togetherd37.73% of the State-P and 23.46% of the State-G reports referred to them together, while these proportions in Local-N-Government and Local-MMarket were only 6.30% and 9.22%, respectively. After the Fukushima accident, there was more coverage on international nuclear issues (34.76%) than before (19.43%) (see Table 2). 3.2. The stakeholders In terms of stakeholder involvement, most of the reports did not mention any stakeholders (State-P ¼ 38.01%, State-G ¼ 37.04%, Local-N-Government ¼ 65.56%, Local-M-Market ¼ 55.63%). When stakeholders were mentioned, the three primary ones were: central government agencies (State-P ¼ 20.15%, State-G ¼ 13.99%, Local-N-Government ¼ 5.19%, Local-M-Market ¼ 6.48%), the nuclear industry (State-P ¼ 38.10%, State-G ¼ 35.80%, Local-N-Government ¼ 10.37%, Local-M-Market ¼ 17.06%) and experts (StateP ¼ 13.92%, State-G ¼ 20.99%, Local-N-Government ¼ 8.89%, LocalM-Market ¼ 9.22%). The positions of NGOs (State-P ¼ 0.37%, StateG ¼ 0.00, Local-N-Government ¼ 0.37%, Local-M-Market ¼ 1.02%), the public (State-P ¼ 1.10%, State-G ¼ 1.65%, Local-N-Government ¼ 1.48%, Local-M-Market ¼ 5.46%) and the media (StateP ¼ 2.56%, State-G ¼ 2.47%, Local-N-Government ¼ 1.48%, Local-MMarket ¼ 3.41%) were rarely mentioned, and the local government (State-P ¼ 9.89%, State-G ¼ 7.41%, Local-N-Government ¼ 8.15%, Local-M-Market ¼ 7.85%) was mentioned moderately. 3.3. Comparisons of risk-benefit frames In terms of overall attitude, national newspapers tended to

promote a positive tone (State-P ¼ 74.36%, State-G ¼ 84.77%), with no negative or neutral attitudes. However, local newspapers were more cautious, with only 12.96% (Local-N-Government) and 8.53% (Local-M-Market) supportive, and the remainder slightly negative, and largely unclear (Local-N-Government ¼ 86.30%, Local-M-Market ¼ 79.86%). The comparison of before and after the Fukushima accident clearly demonstrated that the media was less supportive and mostly in opposition or neutral after the disaster. The chisquare test indicated that the overall attitude variations before and after the Fukushima accident, as well as among the four newspaper sources, were significant. The beneficial and risky frames of nuclear energy are reported in Table 2. Overall, national newspapers tended to portray nuclear energy as good for economic development (State-P ¼ 81.32%, StateG ¼ 59.67%), as an alternative energy to traditional energy sources like coal (State-P ¼ 32.97%, State-G ¼ 50.62%), as green energy (State-P ¼ 48.35%, State-G ¼ 54.73%), as one potential solution for climate change (State-P ¼ 11.72%, State-G ¼ 34.57%), as a necessary part of energy independence and security (State-P ¼ 42.12%, StateG ¼ 55.14%), as a high technology (State-P ¼ 87.55%, StateG ¼ 83.13%) and as a well-developed technology (State-P ¼ 66.30%, State-G ¼ 74.07%). In contrast, the two local newspapers firmly indicated either silent or slightly negative attitudes on the beneficial frames of nuclear energy. 23.33% of Local-N-Government and 19.11% of Local-M-Market reports supported that nuclear energy was good for economic development. 5.56% of Local-NGovernment and 7.17% of Local-M-Market adopted the frame that nuclear energy was an alternative source to replace the traditional energy like coal. 10.00% of Local-N-Government and 5.12% of LocalM-Market proposed that nuclear energy was green energy and the proportions for that nuclear energy is a potential solution for climate change were 4.07% in Local-N-Government and 1.02% in Local-M-Market. Only 6.30% in Local-N-Government and 5.80% in Local-M-Market demonstrated positive attitudes towards the framing that nuclear energy was necessary for energy independence and security. 7.41% and 3.70% of the reports in Local-NGovernment mentioned that nuclear energy was high technology, and well-developed, while these two elements from the Local-MMarket were proportioned at 5.80% and 1.37% respectively. Chisquare test results indicated that all the variations of distributions across the four newspaper sources were significant. Overall, all the beneficial frames besides climate change decreased after the Fukushima accident. The economic benefit frame (positive) decreased from 56.17% to 24.06%, the energy security frame decreased from 29.65% to 19.79%, the alternative to traditional energy frame reduced from 24.68% to 20.05%, the climate change solution frame increased from 10.92% to 14.17%, the green technology, high technology, and well-developed technology frames decreased from 30.64% to 24.33%, 49.79%e33.96%, 39.01%e 26.74%, respectively. The variation in climate change and alternative energy frames before and after the Fukushima accident were not statistically significant (according to the chi-square test), while all the other changes were statistically significant. The risk frames of nuclear power are also reported in Table 2. In terms of nuclear accidents, before the Fukushima accident, most reports did not mention any of the “nuclear accidents” (3.40%) and focused on the risk aspect, while this proportion increased to 20.32% after Fukushima. 16.74% of reports before the Fukushima accident mentioned “accident,” but focused on the controllability of accidents, and this proportion also increased to 27.27% after the Fukushima accident. After Fukushima in 2011, 35.56% of all the reports mentioned the Fukushima accident, 9.63% of them mentioned the Chernobyl accident, while only 3.74% mentioned the Three Mile Island accident. In comparison to the two national newspapers which tended towards the controllability aspect when

Please cite this article as: Du, Q., Han, Z., The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers, Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118695

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Table 2 Beneficial and risky frames of nuclear energy (percentage). before 311

after 311

c2

Unmarked Support Opposite Neutral

51.21 46.81 0.71 1.28

56.68 37.17 2.94 3.21

Beneficial frames Economy Unmarked Positive Negative

43.69 56.17 0.14

Attitude

State-P (N ¼ 273)

State-G (N ¼ 243)

Local-N-Government (N ¼ 270)

Local-N-Market (N ¼ 290)

c2

0.00

25.64 74.36 0.00 0.00

14.81 84.77 0.00 0.41

86.30 12.96 0.74 0.00

79.86 8.53 4.78 6.83

0.00

74.60 24.06 1.34

0.00

18.68 81.32 0.0

39.92 59.67 0.41

75.56 23.33 1.11

80.20 19.11 0.68

0.00

(Pr)

(Pr)

Energy security

Unmarked Guarantee Not

69.22 29.65 1.13

79.95 19.79 0.27

0.00

57.88 42.12 0.0

43.21 55.14 1.65

93.70 6.30 0.0

92.49 5.80 1.70

0.00

Alternative energy

Yes

24.68

20.05

0.09

67.03

49.38

94.44

92.83

0.00

Climate change

Yes

10.92

14.17

0.26

11.72

34.57

4.07

1.02

0.00

Green

Yes

30.64

24.33

0.03

48.35

54.73

10.00

5.12

0.00

High-tech

Yes

49.79

33.96

0.00

87.55

83.13

7.41

5.80

0.00

Well-developed

Yes

39.01

26.74

0.00

66.30

74.07

3.70

1.37

0.00

Risky Frames Nuclear accidents Unmarked Risk Controllable Fukushima Chernobyl Three Mile Island Others

79.86 3.40 16.74 0.14 5.25 0.28 2.84

52.41 20.32 27.27 35.56 9.63 3.74 1.60

0.00

60.49 7.00 32.51 14.40 11.93 1.65 1.23

77.78 9.26 12.96 12.22 4.44 1.48 1.85

74.74 17.75 7.51 16.72 5.80 1.71 4.44

0.00

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.21

67.03 2.20 30.77 6.23 5.49 1.10 1.83

0.00 0.00 0.94 0.06

Environment

Pollution from Accidents Waste Radiation

3.97

16.04

0.00

6.23

6.58

8.15

11.26

0.12

2.13 1.84

5.88 4.81

0.00 0.01

4.76 3.66

8.23 6.17

0.00 0.00

1.37 2.05

0.00 0.00

Health

Unmarked Threat Not Threat

80.85 4.96 14.18

69.52 14.97 15.51

0.00

65.57 4.76 29.67

71.79 8.64 20.16

90.00 6.67 3.33

80.20 13.31 6.48

0.00

NIMBY

Yes

19.03

20.05

0.69

35.16

42.39

0.37

3.07

0.00

accidents were mentioned (State-P ¼ 30.77%, State-G ¼ 32.51%, Local-N-Government ¼ 12.96%, Local-M-Market ¼ 7.51%), local newspapers tended to emphasize on the risk aspect (StateP ¼ 2.20%, State-G ¼ 7.00%, Local-N-Government ¼ 9.26%, Local-MMarket ¼ 17.75%). For other environmental and health risks, there were significant increases (according to the chi-square test) of the risk frames after the Fukushima accident for each of the risk frames, such as the potential radioactive leak from potential accidents (3.97% vs. 16.04%), the potential pollution of nuclear waste (2.13% vs. 5.878%), perceived potential radiation from nuclear power plant (1.84% vs. 4.81%), and human health threat (4.96% vs. 14.97%). The two local newspapers had a higher proportion of frames in which accidents were linked to pollution (Local-N-Government ¼ 8.15%, Local-MMarket ¼ 11.26%, State-P ¼ 6.23%, State-G ¼ 6.58%), but a lower proportion of frames in which accidents were linked to radiation from waste (State-P ¼ 4.76%, State-G ¼ 8.23%, Local-N-Government ¼ 0.00%, Local-M-Market ¼ 1.37%) or nuclear power plants (State-P ¼ 3.66%, State-G ¼ 6.17%, Local-N-Government ¼ 0.00%, Local-M-Market ¼ 2.05%). The local newspapers also tended to propose that nuclear energy is a threat to human health (The nonthreat proportions: State-P ¼ 29.67%, State-G ¼ 20.16%, Local-NGovernment ¼ 3.33%, Local-M-Market ¼ 6.48%). The phrase “not in my backyard” was mentioned far more in national newspapers (State-P ¼ 35.16%, State-G ¼ 42.39%, Local-N-Government ¼ 0.37%, Local-M-Market ¼ 3.07%).

3.4. Regression analysis results Furthermore, logit/logistic and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were employed to estimate the effects of the Fukushima accident and the variation of the four newspapers on the overall attitude of the reports (logit), the benefit frame scores (OLS), and the risk frame scores (OLS), and the results are reported in Table 3. Overall, the regression models were appropriate and had a sound explanatory power, the R2 of the benefit and risk OLS models were 0.260 and 0.448, respectively, and the pseudo R2 of

Table 3 Regression analysis on overall attitude, beneficial frames and risky frames. Benefit

Risk

Attitude

OLS

OLS

Logit#

0.37***(0.11)

0.71***(0.10)

0.81(0.18)

Source (State-P as reference) State-G 1.44***(0.19) Local-N-Government 0.94***(0.14) Local-M-Market 0.12(0.13)

1.15***(0.13) 1.77***(0.12) 3.00***(0.12)

1.80*(0.43) 0.01***(0.00) 0.01***(0.00)

FNA

Fact/Comment

1.01***(0.13)

0.49***(0.12)

57.28***(21.36)

Domestic/International

0.08(0.07)

0.37***(0.06)

0.70**(0.08)

R2

0.260

0.448

0.536 (Pseudo)

# Odds Ratio of the logit regression were reported; Standard errors in parentheses; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Please cite this article as: Du, Q., Han, Z., The framing of nuclear energy in Chinese media discourse: A comparison between national and local newspapers, Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.118695

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the attitude logit model was 0.536. These R2 values indicated that the models have good power of explanations (goodness-of-fit). Compared to reports before the accident, post-Fukushima reports would have a 0.37 lower score on the benefit frame score, ranging from one to seven, and would have a 0.71 higher score on the risk frame score, ranging from one to five. The Fukushima accident’s impact on overall attitude was not statistically significant. Compared to the State-P, State-G would have a 1.44 higher score on the benefit frame, a 1.15 higher score on the risk frame and would be 80% more likely to show a supportive attitude. The Local-NGovernment would have a 0.94 lower score on the benefit frame, a 1.77 score on the risk frame, and would be 99% ((1e0.01)*100%) less likely to report a positive attitude than the State-P. Similarly, the Local-M-Market had a 3.00 higher score on the risk frame and would be 99% less likely to demonstrate a supportive attitude than the State-P. 4. Discussion In this paper, we analyzed the media frame of nuclear energy in China from 2000 to 2016, using four representative newspapers. Two of them are national and state-owned, while the other two are local and more market-oriented newspapers. This paper contributes to current knowledge in three aspects. Firstly, we constructed a nuclear energy coding frame with risk-benefit dimensions and included stakeholders. Secondly, we identified the different framing patterns on the controversial issue of nuclear energy between national and local newspapers in China, and, thirdly, we reconfirmed that a nuclear accident (Fukushima) can negatively impact the media’s positive attitude towards nuclear energy. One media coding frame on nuclear energydthe risk-benefit combined with stakeholders frame (de Groot et al., 2013) dwas constructed through a literature review and our pilot coding. Essentially, the characteristics of news reports that were included are factual/commentary, domestic/international coverage, and the overall tone. The benefit frames included the economy (that nuclear energy is good for economic development and cost-effective), that nuclear energy is a substitute for traditional energy, high-tech, green, and well-developed energy, a solution for climate change, and would secure energy independence. The risk frames covered nuclear accidents, threats to human health, and potential radioactive threats from accidents, nuclear power plants, and waste, and the phrase “not in my backyard.” Stakeholder involvement and feeling of personal responsibility in energy consumption were also included. Overall, as we hypothesized (H1), the Chinese media tends to frame nuclear energy as more positive rather than negative, following the tone of the Chinese government, which has demonstrated a firmly supportive attitude towards nuclear energy (Wang et al., 2014). However, national and local newspapers demonstrate different patterns on the way they framed nuclear energy. Overall, the two national newspapers are more supportive of nuclear energy than the two local newspapers (H3). The two national newspapers have more frames from a general or outsider perspective, such as that nuclear power is green energy, high-tech energy, welldeveloped energy, a possible solution to climate change, etc.; these tones sound more objective. Comparatively, the two local newspapers discuss nuclear energy from a more concrete perspective, especially in terms of detailed risks and nuclear accidents. It is also evident that the national newspapers, as the leading platform from which the Chinese national government’s position is delivered (Fu et al., 2012), tend to frame everything from a national perspective. Moreover, we found that the two local newspapers have relatively more contents on the risk aspect and fewer contents on the benefit aspect. Though the absolute differences between the local

newspapers and national newspapers are not vast, the differences are statistically significant. In contrast, the local newspapers have much higher proportions of reports that did not portray a positive or negative tone. As a country with fewer media freedom (Yamamura, 2012), local newspapers primarily follow the tone of the national newspapers on controversial issues. This is the case even though the controversial issue of nuclear energy is highly localized, because the Guangdong province, in which the two newspapers are located, is where almost one-third of nuclear power plants in the country are situated. Local newspapers cannot demonstrate extreme disagreement with national newspapers, but a large proportion of unclear reports (without clear attitudes) reveal silence which can be assumed to be disagreement. This is an important finding for us to understand Chinese media in the future. Similar to what prior studies have established (Friedman et al., 1992; Park et al., 2016), our analysis demonstrates that the Fukushima nuclear accident negatively affected the media’s benefit frames and positively affected the media’s risk frames. However, these effects are more prevalent in local newspapers than in national newspapers. This study has two primary limitations that should be addressed in future research. The first one is the contents of the coverage. Though the selected newspapers are representative of national and local newspapers related to nuclear energy, some industry newspapers, such as China Energy News and China Electric Power News (both managed by the National Energy Administration), China Environmental News (managed by the Environment Protection Agency) should be analyzed in future to better understand how different supporters frame the controversial issue of nuclear energy. Secondly, we primarily used a human coding method in this analysis. With the increased volume of contents, machine coding will be necessary, and, thus, a method including both machine coding and human coding should be adopted. 5. Conclusions The media frame of nuclear energy in China is investigated in this study. News reports from four representative newspapers, two of them are national and state-owned (The People’s Daily and The Guangming Daily), while the other two are local and more marketorient (The Nanfang Daily and The Southern Metropolis Daily), relating to nuclear energy from 2000 to 2016 are collected, coded, and analyzed using a risk-benefit framework. The results demonstrate that the Chinese media primarily uses a positive tone in discourse relating to nuclear energy, which aligns with the overall national strategy/policies of nuclear development. However, the national and local newspapers demonstrate statistical significant but slight differences, especially regarding the risk dimension of the frames. We also confirm that a nuclear accident (Fukushima) negatively affects the media’s positive attitude towards nuclear energy. Acknowledgements This paper is supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China under grant Emerging Risk and Adaptation of Public Safety System (13AGL009). References Arlt, D., Wolling, J., 2016. Fukushima effects in Germany? Changes in media coverage and public opinion on nuclear power. Public Underst. Sci. 25, 842e857. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662515589276. Boumans, J.W., Vliegenthart, R., Boomgaarden, H.G., 2016. Nuclear voices in the news: a comparison of source, news agency and newspaper content about nuclear energy over time. Eur. J. Commun. 31, 260e282. https://doi.org/10.1177/

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