The Chinese Media Framing of the 2015's Tianjin Explosion

This study compares the framing's patterns of the Chinese traditional media and social media in reporting the incident of Tianjin explosion in 2015. Applying frame-building and framesetting theory, this study explores the interplay between online opinions available on Weibo and the Chinese newspapers in different phases of the crisis event. Moreover, it examines the differences in framing the incident between the state-owned party media and the commercial media. The results reveal that various frames applied by different Chinese media in reporting the incident. A complex interplay between Weibo, the Communist-owned and the commercial happened, including framebuilding, frame-setting, and frame-interacting effects.

With the proliferation of various social media platforms, the journalism has been redefi ned (Lin, 2013) and online discourses have become an important research topic (Luo, 2014). Media scholars have raised the questions, whether or not the agendasetting and framing theories could be applied continuously in the era of new media (Matei, 2010). As such, they question on how online public opinions would impact on traditional media coverage such as newspapers (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989).
Previous studies have examined the interplay between the traditional media and the new media platforms such as Twitter (Conway, Kenski & Wang, 2015), Facebook (Etter & Vestergaard, 2015), online forum (Zhou & Moy, 2007) and political blog (Meraz, 2011). Those researches demonstrate that the social media have infl uenced the public opinions, but how they function remains unclear, since the convergence between the new and the traditional media are blurred (Lin, 2013).

The social media like Twitter and
Facebook are offi cially blocked in China. VOLUME 14, NOMOR 1, Juni 2017: 23-42 There is one local social media application, Weibo that is considered as Chinese version of Twitter, becomes the alternate and one of the most important platforms for online public opinions. As we acknowledged that, the media system in China is less open than in western countries under the strong censorship of the Chinese government. For so long, the Chinese media have been considered as "mouthpiece" of the Communist party (Zhao, 1998). However, some researchers have argued that Chinese media no longer merely serves the Party, nor are the Chinese audience (Yu, 2011;Wang, 2013). Under Researchers found that when reporting a crisis event, media not only transmit crisis message but also interpret the story (Driedger, 2008), and social media have different focus in presenting the crisis compared with traditional media (Driedger, 2008;Littlefi eld & Quenette, 2007;Zhou & Moy, 2007). Therefore, the paper took this important crisis event for case study, and applied frame analysis to discover whether there is any difference between Weibo Both of the agenda-setting and framing theories examine the infl uence of media toward the public. The former focuses more on issue salience, and the later focuses on frame salience in interpreting the issue (Zhou & Moy, 2007, p.81). The two approaches have certain common grounds where McCombs, Shaw & Weaver (1997) considered framing as second-level agenda setting. Entman (1993, h.51) describes framing as selecting and emphasizing certain aspects of experience or ideas over others.
With this, journalists can set the priorities for information related to relevance, newsworthiness and create agendas (Norris, 1995). Frames are like a "story angle" which is signifi cant and helps audience to interpret, evaluate and judge the event, helps audience to think and discuss the events (Price & Tewksbury, 1997). Similar to agenda-setting effect, frame-setting researchers have also found evidence for news frames' affect on people's perception and understood an issue (Pan & Kosicki, 1993;Jasperson, Shah, Watts, Faber & Fan, 1998). Exposure to "differently valence news frames" could lead to opinion change, and repetition of a news frame especially a negative frame strengthens the framing effect and makes it durable (Lecheler, Keer, Andreas, Schuck & Hänggli, 2015 (Zhou & Moy, 2007;Hong & Choi, 2010). Meanwhile, online public opinion is one of the important external factors infl uencing journalists' framing process of news coverage, especially in today's new media era. When examining the relationship between online opinion and media coverage, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) described the online discussion as a "value-added process". Frame building is conceptualized as the impact of online public opinion on traditional media coverage, since social media could serve as sources for media practitioners and play an important role in news production. In turn, frame-setting describes the power of media frames used by journalists in infl uencing netizens' interpretation of a certain issue (Zhou & Moy, 2007, p.82). Zhou and Moy (2007, p.93-94) also argued that in China, the external pressure from the party and the government might exert a greater impact on news framing. Thus, this study applied frame analysis to explore how the online opinion on Weibo and media coverage in mainstream newspapers interact, framed and interpreted during Tianjin explosions crisis in 2015.
When it comes to frame analysis, there were several different approaches utilized by scholars to examine framing effect even though some conceptualization and operationalization process remained scattered in current literature. Main types of frame analysis include the examination of issue-specifi c frames, generalizable frames and combination of these two.
There are several ways to categorize the generalizable frames. Firstly, Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) who used fi ve frames to analyze European politics (attribution of responsibility, humaninterest frame, confl ict frame, morality frame, and economic frames). Secondly, this approach also appeared in Wasike's (2013) study of news in Twitter. Another categorization is gain-based versus lossbased frames as well as self-referential versus other-referential frames (Boydstun & Glazier, 2013). Last, there is Entman's (1993) classic clarifi cation of frames in four dimensions, which are about defi ning problems, diagnosing causes, making moral judgments and suggesting remedies. VOLUME 14, NOMOR 1, Juni 2017: 23-42 Among those different frame-analysis devices, this study chose Entman's frame clarifi cation that is suitable for exploring crisis frames. Some researchers also applied Entman's method and conceptualized crisis frames as the frequency and association of an actor with an attribution and analyzed the problem, the responsibility of the cause, and the solutions of the crisis (Etter & Vestergaard, 2015). Besides, inspired by Boydstun & Glazier's (2013), two-tiered method for identifying media framing, this study combined analysis of generic frames and issue-specifi c frames, and clusters of issue-specifi c frames were categorized into four generalizable frames (Entman, 1993).
Meanwhile, with the rise of the Internet, the question has been raised up, whether agenda-setting or framing theories still apply to social media (Matei, 2010).
Social media are being used to circulate information without having to rely on traditional media to act as gatekeeper, fact-checker, or moderator (Metzgar & Marrugi, 2009  For example, Meraz (2011) affi rms that agenda-setting ability of political blogs and its resistance of traditional media's agendasetting effect. Whereas another study (Etter & Vestergaard, 2015) investigating how Facebook and news media frame a corporate crisis indicates that news media remains a stronger frame-setter while little evidence was found for Facebook's impact on traditional media. Different from fi ndings in political fi eld, this result indicates that though great in number, Facebook turns out to be less infl uential in framing corporation crisis.
We applied frame building and frame setting perspectives to explore the interplay between social media and traditional news media. Frame-building was relatively less investigated because of the diffi culty to test (Hong & Choi, 2010), but the fl ourish of online communities provides another public opinion fi eld to assess the frame-building process. A bidirectional relationship was found between news media and social media, and frame setting effect was supported with news media mainly setting crisis frames of online public (Etter & Vestergaard, 2015).
Facebook netizens apply different crisis frames compared with conventional media but its frame-building power remains limited.
It is rather the news media that exert the frame-setting effect on social media (Etter & Vestergaard, 2015). In political fi eld, politicians frame political issues in social media through the frequency of talking about certain issues and the use of hashtags within them (Hemphill, Culotta & Heston, 2013).
An evidence was been found for framesetting effect that repetitive news frames have a strong and persistent impact on people's political opinions (Lecheler et al., 2015).
Regarding to the Chinese online discourse, Weibo, the most infl uential microblog in China, is also examined by scholars (Wu, Atkin, Mou, Lin & Lau, 2013  low level of trust in Chinese media entities. VOLUME 14, NOMOR 1, Juni 2017: 23-42 In the context of reporting of the crisis events, not only do the media transmit crisis messages, they can also actively interpret the story by selecting elements of a story that they reported and deciding how a story can be packaged (Driedger, 2008).
For instance, traditional media tend to highlight macroeconomic impact, victims, governments' handling and lessons learned, as all these can capture attention and add news values in crisis reporting (Driedger, 2008;Littlefi eld & Quenette, 2007). This study chose a Chinese crisis event to explore the differences that have appeared in reporting the event between a social media, Weibo, and the Chinese mainstream newspapers.
Besides, it is important to point out that Chinese media landscape is different from the western countries and media have been considered as the "mouthpiece" of the government and the Party (Zhao, 1998).
After the 1970s reforms and transformations, Chinese media is characterized by the fusion of Party control and market power (Zhao, 2004). For example, People's daily is considered as the offi cial newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party that provides information on policies and government standpoints. There are also other regional or trans-regional commercial newspapers (i.e. Beijing News) aiming at profi t-making while responding to public opinion. These media were considered as engaging in a "tug of war" between Party and capitalism (Zhao, 1998, p.17-18). Taking this dual system of Chinese media into consideration, this paper also explores whether there is any difference between Communist party media and commercial media when reporting a crisis event.
Taking into account the specialty of Chinese media system and aiming at exploring how Chinese-characterized social media, Weibo differs from and infl uences Chinese mainstream media, this study puts  There is a relatively obvious change of number on both platforms every three days. Taking all above into consideration, we divided our research period into 5 phases with a 3-day time span as shown in the chart below to investigate possible interaction between various phases. To investigate the interplay between traditional media and Weibo, as well as the difference between Communist party media and commercial media, news articles in People's daily and the Beijing News (Xinjing Bao) were collected and coded. People's daily is the biggest newspaper group in China and an offi cial newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, while The Beijing News is one of the best-selling and trans-regional newspapers that paid great attention to Tianjin blast with a high number of related articles being published. After searching with key word "Tianjin Explosions in Chinese" in Huike database, we collected 21 news articles in People's daily and 44 in The Beijing News in total.
As for Weibo posts, we used a web crawler software (Gooseeker) to collect all the Weibo posts containing key word Tianjin Explosions. After manually fi ltering all the offi cial government, media and corporation accounts, we selected the most reposted 30 Weibo posts each day, which represented the most popular online opinion, and obtained 450 posts (15 days) in total for content analysis.
The unit of analysis of this study is newspaper articles and Weibo posts. When the post turned out to be a link of an article, the article was coded as unit of analysis. As mentioned previously, this study applied the two-tiered method for framing analysis through categorizing several issue-specifi c frames into four generic frames. The chart below shows our defi nition of four generic frames and issue-specifi c frames categorized into each.    with media frames at the same (Table 5) or another point in time (Table 6). Moreover, the study thoroughly examined the framing mechanism including effective time lag and found strong framing effect with both onephase (3 days) lag and two-phase (6 days) lag. There were in total 8 sets of signifi cant framing relationships (Figure 1). on press was demonstrated only on defi ning problems frame and its framing effect was negative on press in the middle period (Phase 2, 3, 4) while positive in the last period (Phase 5).
2) Weibo's making moral judgments frames in all phases are negatively correlated with press' in its corresponding phases, though the correlations were weak (P>0.05).
3) As to diagnosing causes frame, the framing effect of Weibo was positive on press in the middle phases (Phase 2, 3, 4) and then the effect became negative in the last period (Phase 5). found in terms of making moral judgments.
However, there was a tendency that press generally positively infl uenced the making moral judgments frame of Weibo across the time spans.
As to the frame-interacting effect, signifi cant correlations between Weibo and press were found only during Phase 1 and Phase 5 with regard to defi ning problems frame.
However, during Phase 1, the interaction was      (Yang, 2009;Yang, 2012). Furthermore, this trend is also consistent with China's media reforms and the specialty of Chinese media system: fusion of Party control and market power (Zhao, 2004). It is no longer negligible especially for local media to respond to public concerns and make profi ts.
In social media era, Weibo becomes the most important online discourse fi eld.
The study found some differences between online public opinion and traditional media frames. In the beginning of the crisis, social media and traditional media both frequently applied defi ning problems frame. Though on Weibo, moral judgments frame was more salient in Phase 1. This could be explained by the regular circulation of the information that people tended to ask about what happened in the beginning, then searching for the reasons and solutions. The frame pattern in the crisis also evolved from problem defi nition to remedy suggestion (Zhou & Moy, 2007;Entman, 1993 Thus, the voices and frames on social media were more diversifi ed than in traditional media, which portrayed the individual stories mainly in a positive manner. Wang (2013) pointed out the diversity of online opinion and competing of different frames refl ected the fragmented Chinese society and publics.
The prevalence of moral judgment frame in newspapers was also consistent with prior studies indicating traditional media frequently used human interest frame to resonate with audiences' compassion for victims (Yang, 2009 (Hong & Choi, 2010).
As the event went on, the use of suggesting remedies frame increased distinctly on social media. The netizens provided solutions and tried to push forward the investigation process and even some social reforms relying on the power of online community and public opinion.
But, it remains unclear whether the online public opinion could effectively infl uence the policy-makers, since Zhou and Moy (2007, p.93) suggested that in authoritarian system, the frame-building power may not reach the policy level.
As to the last research part, this paper demonstrated strong frame interplay between online public opinion and news coverage on national crisis especially regarding fame building and frame setting, which was consistent with prior fi ndings (Hong, 2009).
In this study, traditional media's frame-setting effect was more dominant than social media's frame-building effect. Traditional media served as important information sources for Weibo and exerted framing strategies in different phases to guide or shape the public opinion in a way that the government or news organizations hoped (Meraz, 2009).
However, social media played an important role in transforming the original event into an infl uential issue (Zhou, 2007). Thereby, it prompted crisis managers to take measures as soon as possible.
Although China's social media, Weibo, owns large popularity in China whose online discourse imposes more or less infl uence on media coverage, the platform is censored by the Chinese government, meanwhile the traditional media is controlled by authorities or interest groups (Zhao, 2000;Auer & Fu, 2015 We suggest future research on how the degree of democracy infl uences the framing interplay between social media and traditional media. In addition, the fi ndings of signifi cant framing effect with both one-phase (3 days) lag and two-phase lag (6 days) in the study expand prior studies (Zhou, 2007;Etter & Vestergaard, 2015), applying 7-day time lag. Framing interplay could happen within fewer days between social media and traditional media and the phase setting could infl uence the statistical analysis.
This study sheds light on the framing strategies for both the public opinion and news media. The public frames could push news media and policy makers to take responsibilities in specifi c phase. The media and policy makers apply targeted frame to control the fl ow of public opinion. In addition, policy makers or crisis managers could gain insight into public frames and predict future "reputation threats" among the public opinion (Coombs, 2011). The commercial media in China appeared more a critical fact-fi nder than party media by analyzing more of accountabilities. The party media, however, appeared more prudent by resonating with the public, to emphasize the role of government and to build a positive image.
Social media was more emotional and solution-oriented, with more remedy suggestions and moral judgments, than traditional media which more on to problems defi ning and diagnosing. Additionally, traditional media exerted more framing power than social media over the crisis event. Traditional media restructured the generic frames of social media by adapting its own frames, in order to manipulate the fl ow of public opinion. While social media could transform a crisis event into an infl uential issue to compel news media to track the event and crisis managers to take measures. However, this study is not free of limitations. This case study demonstrates different logics of crisis coverage, but it could also be lack of generalizability. It is not clear yet about the methodologically decide regarding the optimum time span in frame-setting and agenda-setting studies (Lee et. al., 2005). Thus, it is necessary for future examination to tackle this problem both theoretically and empirically.