Divergence Behind Consensus: A critical discourse analysis of Australian and Chinese press coverage of Athens' preparations for the 2004 Olympic Games

Before staging a successful summer Olympic Games, Athens wascriticised worldwide for its preparation woes. The global media highlighted the delaysin the construction of the host city's sports venues and the Games’ skyrocketingoperating budget. This study focuses on the news coverage of the issue by theAustralian and Chinese press. These countries have peculiarly interestedperspectives given their roles as hosts of the preceding (2000 Sydney) andsucceeding (2008 Beijing) summer Olympic Games. The reportage of both countries'press appears similar, but, given the different ideological positions embodied in theirpress attitudes and opinions, some divergence can still be found behind theconsensus. This research employs the method of critical analysis of media discourseto examine the news coverage of the issue regarding the preparations of the Athens'Olympics by the selected Australian (The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald)and Chinese (People's Daily and China Daily) newspapers during the period fromNovember 2003 to November 2004. This comparative study in internationaljournalism explores the ideological underpinning of media discourse and its influenceon news media representations. In particular, it establishes the value of lexicaland propositional methods of discourse analysis for developing a comparative framework in which tostudy international perspectives on a complex set of events.