The Narrative Policy Framework in China: A Social Media Analysis of the Changzhou Foreign Languages School Soil Pollution Incident

Soil pollution has been a serious environmental problem in China for decades with focusing events happening from time to time in different regions. Media coverage of such events potentially shape subsequent policymaking processes. This study uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to analyze media coverage of a major soil pollution event in China that occurred in 2016 at the Changzhou Foreign Languages School in Jiangsu Province. We use a dataset consisting of articles published on the Chinese social media platform WeChat. In the analysis, we employ a codebook and code the NPF elements in all the articles using NVivo. While previous studies have examined narratives’ role in policy making through the NPF, there are only few explorations of the NPF application in China’s context and no such studies employing WeChat Official Accounts database. The results contribute to our understanding of narratives about environmental pollution in China while deepening our understanding of narratives during focusing events.