Re-Examining the Dispute Over the Diaoyu Islands' Sovereignty: Exploring an International Law Issue from Media Discourse Perspective

This interdisciplinary study attempts to approach an international law issue from a media discourse perspective, exploring a new lens to examine traditional international law issues. Adopting a triangulation of both quantitative and qualitative analysis, and making news coverage as the study objects, this paper focuses on the Sino-Japanese dispute over Diaoyu Islands sovereignty and examines the features of media discourse. After comparatively analyzing media discourse about the Diaoyu Islands' sovereignty of both China and Japan, it can be found out that a stark contrast is formed between a strong Chinese government and a weak constructed Japanese government. When it comes to the ways of claiming sovereignty, both of the countries have different channels and hold perspectives to stand up for its own side. However, media discourse in China seems to be not so convincing and persuasive as that in Japan. Therefore, it is advised that channels to claim sovereignty should be multidimensional and perspectives should be enriched so as to win over international support on this issue.