Exploring the impact of trade sanctions A frame analysis on Huawei’s stakeholders’ responses to “the Huawei ban”

In May 2019, the U.S. government signed off executive order 13873, which restricts U.S. companies' export of information and communications technology to "foreign adversaries" for national security reasons. Essentially, this policy alludes to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei. Media coverage portrayed a significant number of diverse stances and opinions from different stakeholders that relate to Huawei. This thesis took Huawei ban news as an example to study the “unspoken” in the media- News Framings. The aim was to understand how do news media frame the strategic responses of the different stakeholders in the interactions between Huawei and the U.S. government. This research attended to the cultural difference between the U.S. and China. 50 articles from the U.S. and Chinese online news outlets were analysed by five frames, the news sources included general news and specialized news. Three types of frames were referenced from empirical framing studies and two types of frames were developed specifically for the Huawei case. The dataset was relatively large (985 units). Hence, after producing the primary results from framing analysis, the researcher then analysed the primary results by a highly structured result analysis design. The analysis purpose was to find out the differences between the two countries’ applications of news framings and for allocating the framing focus. The results have shown that geopolitics was the overarching theme, but both countries’ media tended to use other issues to conceal the Huawei ban’s geopolitical essence. Furthermore, geopolitics was the centre of disputes between stakeholders. The U.S. and Chinese cultural values were reflected by the news frames, as the U.S. news outlets applied the frames in a more direct manner. However, unconventional characteristics were detected from Chinese specialised news. Moreover, the framing analysis indicated that the ban will harm the U.S and China mutually, and the technological complementary of the U.S. and China was stressed. This research could provide insight into mass media’s effect in conflict situations where the social integration of novel technology was emphasised.