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CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1 Significance and the Purpose of the Study
The modern society has witnessed a rapid development of new technology andglobalization in economy, politics, and communication. These unprecedenteddevelopments make the world a smaller village where human beings are enjoying thegreat convenience brought about by science, technology and closer internationalconnection. However, human beings still face uncontrollable and withering disasterswhether natural or man-made which affect the whole world and have an extensiveimpact on people’s life. For example, the Lockerbie tragedy on December 21,1988—the Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over the Scottish town, killing 259 onboard as well as 11 local residents on the ground; the crash of SilkAir flight MI185 onDecember 19, 1997 killed all the 104 people on board and the plane was almostcompletely destroyed. In 2014, a series of air crash attracts the attention of manycountries and reminds people how fragile life is under the circumstance of disaster.Several definitions have been given to the word disaster. The Oxford EnglishDictionary (2009) defines “Disaster” as serious damage and pain caused by natural orman-made calamities. Whereas Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1997)defines “Disaster” as a sudden event such as a flood, storm, or an accident, whichcauses great damage or suffering and poses various challenges or even tragedies tohuman beings or society. Due to its profound influence on society and people’s dailylife, disaster has always been the focus of news report. And as a result, disastercoverage is regarded of high news value.
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1.2 methodology
The thesis applies qualitative research method. The predominant methodology ofthis study is content analysis which can be divided into two forms, empirical contentanalysis and hermeneutic content analysis. The former research methodology, as acombination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, is often applied in all kinds ofresearches. The quantitative analysis is a way to express or reflect the researcher’sintention or potential meanings. Content analysis can change complex qualitativesources into the accurate quantitative data and it is suitable for text analyses. Meanwhile,compared with other kinds of research methodologies, it is applicable to deal withcomplex materials.In order to make a contrastive analysis of cultural differences, empirical contentanalysis is applied as the research method. The author collects more than two hundreddisaster reports from four newspapers to conduct such study. Two charts are attached tothe thesis as appendixes which contain the title and date of each report, whether a photoor video is included in the article, whether the report is positive, neutral or negative,attitude towards officials and experts.Regarding the content analysis, in order to support the presumptions, the authorreads through all the coverage looking for relevant materials which have involvementwith different dimensions. As for each dimension, the focus varies from language,visual presentation, attitude towards authority and experts, main idea, tone, wording tothe depth of the report. To some extent, the study of the disaster coverage from theabove mentioned perspectives can provide a new angle to the further study.
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW

Chapter two presents the fact that scholars from across Chi