The Doklam Standoff Revisited: A Content Examination of Sino-Indian Media
The research aimed to find the cues that Indian and Chinese news media gave to indicate that they had an agenda on Doklam standoff. It was further augmented with evaluation of China threat notion and attempts to create illusory truth effect in the news content. By executing content analysis, it was discerned that both Indian and Chinese news media hosted all the cues confirming that they had a pre-defined agenda on the coverage of Doklam standoff and that the agenda was bestowed on the media by the government. While Xinhua had an agenda to repeatedly justify China’s position on Doklam and highlight the possibilities of war by shifting the onus of the same on India, PTI had an agenda to give space to voices of all parties involved, to repeatedly restate the negative implications of standoff and all the threats it was getting from China. The findings not only suggested what was explicit in the news agenda, but also indicated the implicit or the undesirable; thus, it was found that both Indian and Chinese news media besides advancing their agenda were even contingently confirming to the notions of China threat theory and were attempting to create an illusory truth effect.