Framing of the belt and road initiative by selected India online newspapers

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched by China in 2013. The Chinese government perceives this initiative as an economic cooperation effort aimed at addressing obstacles that impede development. The intricacies of the China-India relationship have caused India to perceive the BRI from a distinct perspective. The role of relationship type as an external factor in the frame-building process has been neglected until now. This study aims to determine the influence of China-India relationship types on the five generic frames formulated by Semetko and Valkenburg in 2000. The relationship types include cooperation relationship, competition relationship, and friction relationship. The frames under consideration encompass the responsibility frame, human interest frame, conflict frame, morality frame, and economic consequences frame. The study employs quantitative content analysis as its methodology, utilising this approach to analyse news articles sourced from selected India online newspapers, namely The Times of India, The Hindus, and Hindustan Times. A total of 658 news articles were selected in online newspapers, covering the period from September 2013 to September 2022. This study found that relationship types indeed play a significant role in the frame-building process. Cooperation relationship had a very weak positive correlation with the responsibility frame; the competition relationship had a very weak negative correlation with the responsibility frame and a weak negative correlation with the conflict frame; the friction relationship had a weak positive correlation with the conflict frame. Overall, it can be concluded that the highlighted relationship types do indeed influence the framing of news.