“Friends” and “strangers” in the discourses of the media of the Russian Federation and the United States in relation to the environmental policy of China on the example of “Kommersant” and “The New York Times” in 2016-2018
The article is devoted to the features of media discourses in the construction of ecological opposition “us and them”, or “friends and strangers”, the content sides of China's ecological images in the media discourses in the period of 2016-2018 years of foreign media such as “Kommersant” and “The New York Times” are summarized in the paper. The relevance of this work relies on the fact that in recent years, the environmental agenda has attracted more and more attention of media workers as the global economy is changing from polluting to clean. From the perspective of cognitive communication, the reason for the binary opposition in media texts is analyzed. We draw a conclusion that the image of China's eco-policy in the foreign media discourses largely depends on their “friends” image, both in the Russian Federation's media and America's. There are five kinds of backgrounds in the field of ecology like economic, geopolitical, scientific and technological, socio-cultural and environmental backgrounds, on which the principles or reasons for the formation of the image of a “stranger” PRC in the newspapers “The New York Times” and “Kommersant” are based. The results of this study can be used to improve China's foreign information policy in various global ecological-related strategic communication situations.