Search

As one of the major venues for articulating and disseminating national agendas and opinion discourse, national newspapers play a critical role in promulgating ideology. Underpinned by Intertextuality and Social Actor Theory, this study explores intertextual aspects of China Daily’s reporting of COVID-19 to unearth hidden ideology behind texts. The analysis reveals diversified voices from multiple actors around the globe, with China’s official leaders appearing most frequently. In the portrayal of social actors, some strategies like impersonalisation, and genericisation are utilised to add impersonal authority or power to an actor’s activity, actant’s engagement, and increase the trustworthiness of news. These reprsentational strategies belies a transformation in Chinese media discourse with a softer approach is used in wielding ideological intentions through journalistic practices of intertextuality. Our findings help to unravel how news texts draw on, echo, and bring together multiple intertextual resources realised in the forms of discourses. The circulations, dissemination and incorporation of these intertextual relations and practices construct specific understandings of ideology consolidation and public relations within the context of China and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One primary concern in researching journalistic practice and media production is the difficulty of gaining research access to media organizations and their media professionals. This paper theorizes Small World Sampling method for identifying and recruiting participants for qualitative research. Based on an ethnographic interview study involving 32 journalists at six different international news organizations, our Small World Sampling method created a direct research path into journalists’ professional occupational networks without having to negotiate indirect access through their non-journalist organizational gatekeepers (e.g. PR executives, HR department, managers). Small World Sampling allows the participant selection process to be guided by media practitioners’ expert and in-group knowledge of their professional network of media colleagues and acquaintances. More methodologically important, our Small World Sampling protocol offers a novel technique for demonstrating the qualitative reliability of the sampling process and for establishing the qualitative validity of the sample under study. Additionally, the paper introduces the concept of ‘contextual case studies’ offering additional nuance and insights enriching the conclusions drawn from the project’s main case studies. Beyond media and journalism research, we propose that Small World Sampling may also prove useful for other fields to facilitate research access into closed organizations, elite networks, and hidden communities.