BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND EUROPEANISM: REPRESENTATIONS OF CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE IN BULGARIAN MEDIA, 2013-2018
BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND EUROPEANISM: REPRESENTATIONS OF CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE IN BULGARIAN MEDIA, 2013-2018

Summary/Abstract: In 2013 China put forward the BRI – Belt and Road Initiative, part of its focus was to intensify investment in the countries along the Belt and Road including Bulgaria. Meanwhile Bulgaria was seeking for new foreign investment. The China’s initiative did not receive any reflection in Bulgarian media during the first four years. In 2017, the first Belt and Road forum was held in Beijing. Then during the period 2017-2018, reports on the BRI started to emerge in Bulgarian media and its coverage was polarised. The papers used techniques from framing theories to present how the initiative was presented differently in selected media reports from the online newspapers Trud, Ataka, Capital and Club ’Z’. Furthermore, the research explored the reasons behind the difference from the perspectives of nationalism and Europeanism. The paper argues that the pro-European media tend to see China’s initiative as a risk, while the nationalist media tend to see the BRI as an opportunity. The opportunity lies in the economic benefit from the short-term effect, while the risk is inferred from the political influence from the long-term run. From the viewpoint of political psychology, there was lack of familiarity and intensive engagement with China, which made the BRI perceived as a risk. Overall, the paper analyses bias in the Bulgarian media through the example of China’s BRI.

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