A Multimodal Analysis of News Magazines’ Portrayals of the United States, China and Russia in Cover Images and Cover Stories

Radina, Alena

A Multimodal Analysis of News Magazines’ Portrayals of the United States, China and Russia in Cover Images and Cover Stories

Radina, Alena

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Publication Type:: Thesis
Issue Date:: 2023

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Radina, Alena
dc.date.accessioned	2023-10-03T04:16:30Z
dc.date.available	2023-10-03T04:16:30Z
dc.date.issued	2023
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/172439
dc.description	University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.description.abstract	News magazine covers are visual history books of national representation. By incorporating less-intrusive framing tools and indirectly setting the public agenda, covers are a magazine’s most influential editorial and design page. The object of this analysis is 47 front-page caricatures and cover stories representing the US, China, and Russia in Time, Der Spiegel, The Economist, The Spectator, Beijing Review, Época, and Expert. This research departs from traditional semiotic analysis and incorporates interviews with illustrators to explain their semiotic choices. The sampling framework considers two time periods to compare countries’ representation, with two last Presidents in Russia and China and three in the US. The discursive practice of the West versus the Rest, multimodally expressed in the magazines, is an ideological structure that depicts power relations between peripheral Russia, semi-peripheral China, and the core US. Although Time, The Economist, The Spectator, Der Spiegel, and Época acknowledge the US’s diminishing leadership role, they employ the ‘regime of truth’ that portrays Russia and China as revisionist powers. In contrast, Beijing Review and Expert promote multipolarity to reverse the Cold War settlement. Western magazines try to protect democracy from Putin’s rage, Xi’s ambition, and Trump’s complacency, presenting the leaders as three enemies and little big men. Semiotic, multimodal, and Transnational Comparative Framing analyses supported by the interviews with the illustrators lay the groundwork for investigating why the magazines deploy certain stereotypical signs and frames rather than others. This research investigates to what degree cover images and cover stories correlate, what they can tell us about media professionals’ representations of their own and other nations, and how political satire contributes to ‘othering’.	en_US.UTF-8
dc.format	Thesis (PhD)
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US.UTF-8
dc.relation	https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/172439/1/thesis.pdf
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
dc.rights	The author owns the copyright in this thesis including all reproduction and reuse rights for the work. The work may not be altered without the permission of the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from this thesis.
dc.rights	© 2023 Alena Radina
dc.rights	au.edu.uts.lib/nph
dc.title	A Multimodal Analysis of News Magazines’ Portrayals of the United States, China and Russia in Cover Images and Cover Stories	en_US.UTF-8
dc.type	Thesis
utslib.copyright.status	embargoed	*
utslib.copyright.embargo	2025-07-16T00:00:00+1000

Abstract:

News magazine covers are visual history books of national representation. By incorporating less-intrusive framing tools and indirectly setting the public agenda, covers are a magazine’s most influential editorial and design page. The object of this analysis is 47 front-page caricatures and cover stories representing the US, China, and Russia in Time, Der Spiegel, The Economist, The Spectator, Beijing Review, Época, and Expert. This research departs from traditional semiotic analysis and incorporates interviews with illustrators to explain their semiotic choices. The sampling framework considers two time periods to compare countries’ representation, with two last Presidents in Russia and China and three in the US. The discursive practice of the West versus the Rest, multimodally expressed in the magazines, is an ideological structure that depicts power relations between peripheral Russia, semi-peripheral China, and the core US. Although Time, The Economist, The Spectator, Der Spiegel, and Época acknowledge the US’s diminishing leadership role, they employ the ‘regime of truth’ that portrays Russia and China as revisionist powers. In contrast, Beijing Review and Expert promote multipolarity to reverse the Cold War settlement. Western magazines try to protect democracy from Putin’s rage, Xi’s ambition, and Trump’s complacency, presenting the leaders as three enemies and little big men. Semiotic, multimodal, and Transnational Comparative Framing analyses supported by the interviews with the illustrators lay the groundwork for investigating why the magazines deploy certain stereotypical signs and frames rather than others. This research investigates to what degree cover images and cover stories correlate, what they can tell us about media professionals’ representations of their own and other nations, and how political satire contributes to ‘othering’.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/172439