A Study on Discourse Differences Between International Communication and Local Government Affairs News — A Comparative Analysis of Chinese and English News Headlines from Wenzhou

Abstract

This study takes Wenzhou's Chinese and English news headlines from the same period time as its research object. Employing content analysis, it establishes a unified nine-category thematic classification framework, coding 96 English international publicity headlines and 179 Chinese local government affairs headlines, calculating their proportions, and conducting a comparative interpretation. The findings reveal that Chinese local news takes party and government governance as its core narrative thread, focusing on intra-city governance, policy implementation, and local industrial development, while English international news downplays official government discourse and prioritizes foreign trade and cross-border international cooperation as its communication core. The two differ significantly in industrial narrative perspective, the orientation of science and technology talent publicity, the scope of infrastructure and transportation coverage, the weight of ecological and livelihood topics, the positioning of cultural tourism communication, and the selection of subjects in international cooperation. These differences fundamentally stem from the divergence in audience targeting, communication objectives, and publicity scenarios between the two types of media texts. This study provides additional insights for optimizing international communication strategies in domestic cities.