Mobilising public support for the U.S. China-trade war: a comparison of U.S. and Chinese news media.

In international conflicts, national governments establish the legitimacy of their positions or policies through news announcements. This study examines how the news media in each country, through alignment with their government's foreign policies, mobilised public support for the U.S.–China trade war. Furthermore, we explain the intricacies of the relationship among government policy and the news media, by showing how the government plays an important role as a news source for the news media. We analyse how the news media's frames of reporting are influenced by the government and how the news media shape the public's understanding of the conflict. We utilise a comparative content analysis of four mainstream news media in China and seven mainstream news media in the U.S. to show how both governments provide the frames of the trade conflict and dependence of the news media on elite news sources help mobilise support of their audiences following the government's framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]