China in the British Imaginary: Coverage of Beijing Olympics in the UK National Press

Categorised as ‘mega-events’, the Olympics have long been an incredibly elaborate media spectacle in the guise of a purportedly idyllic and ostensibly shared global story, which uniquely reveals about host cultures, carrying real implications for international relations and  domestic interests. Such a rich cultural repertoire shared in the media discourse becomes part of the popular imagination that constitutes the collective memory. It is in this sense that British media coverage of Beijing Olympics has shaped how a distant culture is discursively constructed and geopolitically defined. This article will answer the following questions:

-Which themes are focused on in the British press coverage of Beijing Olympics?

-How does the character of reportage vary between different titles?

-What is the general image of China that emerges from the coverage to be analysed?

-How does media narratives of Beijing Olympics relate to the wider context of an evolving repertoire of Orientalism in a discursive power struggle in the globalised context?