Heliyon (Sep 2023)
Shared sustainability: An analysis of the belt and road initiative agenda network of united nation news website
Abstract
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a global initiative that is gaining increasing attention, participation, and communication globally. However, most existing studies on BRI-related communication are based on BRI communication as the background. As an important theory of communication, network agenda-setting (NAS) theory, as an important theory of communication, is used to focus on an increasing number of objects that are rarely studied by international organizations. The United Nations (UN) news website, which is the official website of the largest international governmental organization, is available in nine languages (as of May 7, 2021), including Chinese, English, French, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, and Hindi, providing news reports based on audience research. Thus, this study analyzed the BRI agenda network of UN's nine languages web pages, calculates BRI-related elements and correlation strength, and forms a multidimensional matrix in conjunction with the NAS theory. Finally, based on the summary statistics of the BRI agenda network, the UN news website agenda network was summarized and formed. The correlation strength of nine languages and 26 content pieces was analyzed using statistical principal components and cluster analysis. The result showed that the BRI agenda network of the UN news website had a strong link with the UN's sustainable development goals. Note that the BRI agendas in different languages can influence each other, making sustainability a crucial element for both BRI and the UN. In addition, the NAS theory can work within the same organization. However, there is still room for improvement in BRI's sustainable global discourse communication, such as audience analysis, language-ability building, and diversification of communication bodies and methods.
