Proceedings of the 2026 6th International Conference on Public Management and Intelligent Society (PMIS 2026)

2026 6th International Conference on Public Management and Intelligent Society (PMIS 2026)

📍Xiamen, China🗓️ 24-26 April 2026
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Thematic Framing and Sentiment in Western Media Coverage of Xinjiang: An LLM-Based Analytical Study of UK and US Reporting (2013–2025)

Authors
Abidan Ainiwaer1, *, Jiang Liu2, Fei Wang1
1School of Journalism & Communication Xinjiang University, Urumqi, China
2School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
*Corresponding author. Email: aabida@xju.edu.cn
Corresponding Author
Abidan Ainiwaer
Available Online 6 July 2026.
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6239-721-7_24How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Western media coverage of Xinjiang; Thematic framing; Sentiment analysis; Large language models; Comparative media research; analytical findings
Abstract

This paper examines thematic framing and sentiment in Xinjiang reporting by mainstream media in the United Kingdom and the United States from 2013 to 2025. Based on a balanced corpus of 1,800 news articles drawn from six major media outlets, the study employs a large language model (LLM) to conduct article-level thematic analysis and sentiment analysis. Article-level topic labels are consolidated into six higher-order frames: human rights issues, security and social stability, ethnicity and cultural identity, international politics and diplomatic responses, governance and crisis events, and disasters and livelihood. The results show that negative sentiment remains dominant across the corpus, although the degree of negativity varies across outlets. The findings further suggest that evaluative orientation is closely associated with recurring thematic frames rather than distributed independently of them. By integrating thematic framing and sentiment analysis in a balanced comparative design, the study demonstrates the analytical value of LLM-assisted content analysis in journalism and communication research.

Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2026 6th International Conference on Public Management and Intelligent Society (PMIS 2026)
Series
Advances in Engineering Research
Publication Date
6 July 2026
ISBN
978-94-6239-721-7
ISSN
2352-5401
DOI
10.2991/978-94-6239-721-7_24How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2026 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Abidan Ainiwaer
AU  - Jiang Liu
AU  - Fei Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/06
TI  - Thematic Framing and Sentiment in Western Media Coverage of Xinjiang: An LLM-Based Analytical Study of UK and US Reporting (2013–2025)
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 6th International Conference on Public Management and Intelligent Society (PMIS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 247
EP  - 260
SN  - 2352-5401
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-721-7_24
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-721-7_24
ID  - Ainiwaer2026
ER  -