ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the methodological framework of this study. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is administered to examine the ideological discourse and representation of the key social actors in the lead texts of the media coverage of trade wars (i) between China and its trading partners in 2010, and (ii) between Japan and its trading partners in 1987. Regarding qualitative analysis, CDA is employed. Specifically, this study relies on van Dijk’s (1980) macro-rules and van Leeuwen’s (1996) socio-semantic inventory of social-actor representation to analyse the lead texts of the Western newsmagazines. Turning to quantitative analysis, the frequency distribution of the social actors is tabulated in percentages and numbers regarding the representational categories applied.
