Construction of the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area City Image in the Eyes of the Media Corpus Study

Abstract

Drawing on the NOW (News on the Web) corpus and integrating quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper investigates how news discourse constructs the city image of the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China (for brevity, the country name “China” is omitted in subsequent references). Framing theory is employed to compare the “home” narratives produced by Guangdong media with the “external” narratives circulated by overseas outlets. The findings reveal that the GBA’s global image is co-produced by two complementary forces: (1) the self-representation of Guangdong media anchored in local perspective and (2) the external representation projected by foreign media. The study recommends intensifying cross-cultural communication and refining multimodal communication strategies so that a more positive and coherent GBA image can be circulated on the world stage.