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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:3 (2025) ► pp.365–389

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Unveiling ideological shifts in news trans‑editing

A critical narrative analysis of English and Chinese narratives on the 2014 Hong Kong protests

ORCiD logo with link | Beijing Foreign Studies University | Hangzhou Dianzi University
 | Beijing Foreign Studies University
Published online: 26 February 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22114.pin
Abstract
This article expands on previous research on news trans-editing by examining the relationship between ideology and language. Using a conceptual framework that combines critical discourse analysis with narrative analysis, the study analyses a corpus of trans-edited news articles on the 2014 Hong Kong protests. These articles were collected from Reference News, along with their source texts from various English-language international media. Narrative analysis was conducted using NVivo computer-assisted tools, including cluster analysis, word frequency and matrix coding. The findings reveal significant shifts in the narratives between the original and trans-edited versions, indicating that the trans-editors recontextualised the news narratives by determining the narrators, retroversions and frequency of the narrative texts. These results suggest that news trans-editing is not a neutral process, but is rather influenced by the ideological stance of the news outlet.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.A case study of English and Chinese narratives on the 2014 Hong Kong protests
    • 3.1Data and methods
      • 3.1.1Data
      • 3.1.2Methods
    • 3.2Findings
      • 3.2.1Narrators of news narratives
      • 3.2.2External retroversions
      • 3.2.3Frequency of internal retroversions
    • 3.3Summary
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix: News articles
References (50)
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Appendix: News articles
Chiu, Joanna. 2014. “Hong Kong Protesters Try to Win over Tourists.” Associated Press, October 2, 2014. [URL]
Harris, Peter. 2014. “Putting Hong Kong in Historical Context.” The Diplomat, October 11, 2014. [URL]
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