Discrepancies in the portrayal of Japan’s nuclear water release in Chinese and US media outlets: A corpus-based news values analysis of marine disputes

This article aims to explore the reactions and cognitions of Chinese and US societies toward Japan’s nuclear water release by comparing the methods used to construct this event in media reports from these two countries. Adopting corpus linguistic methods and a discursive news value analysis approach, this study examines news values through key words, nomination strategies and photographs in Chinese and US mainstream English language news coverage. The results show that by exercising overall control in multimodal news devices, the Chinese media dominantly constructed Japan’s nuclear water release as an environmentally harmful and legally irresponsible behavior for international society and demonstrated a prominent antagonistic position and critical attitude, while the US media mainly constructed Japan’s nuclear water release as a technically safe and politically rational behavior and manifested its neutral position and acceptive attitude. The results indicate that the acceptance of US society was supported by Japan’s technical treatment of nuclear waste water and by Japan’s political authorities’ justification for their behaviors, while the opposition of Chinese society was supported by their inquiries about the illegality of Japan’s behavior and their worries about the damage caused by Japan to the ocean environment and to the security of the international community. This study revealed the social cognitive grounds for supporting the political positions of the two countries in terms of Japan’s nuclear water release and demonstrated an effective sociological analysis method for examining the maritime disputes and marine strategies of different countries.