Abstract
This study investigates how the legitimacy of new energy development has been constructed in China over the past 2 decades through evolving governance strategies and media representations. Drawing on corpus-assisted discourse analysis of English-language reports from major Chinese media outlets (China Daily, Xinhua, and People’s Daily Online), the study examines how energy discourses—via keywords, nomination strategies, and news photographs—have aligned public narratives with shifting governance roles. Unlike previous studies that focus on specific technologies, short time periods, or firm-level legitimacy strategies, this study provides the first longitudinal, corpus-assisted multimodal analysis tracing how discursive legitimacy has evolved across four governance phases in China’s energy transition. The findings reveal four distinctive phases: early state-led technological experimentation, local-government-driven wind expansion, diversified innovation involving domestic firms and international partners, and a recentralized national strategy shaped by carbon-neutrality commitments. Across all phases, media discourse employed stable value-laden labels and increasingly affective visual strategies that normalized policy orientations and reinforced the legitimacy of evolving governance arrangements. These patterns demonstrate how discursive mechanisms function as tools of soft governance, complementing formal policy instruments by shaping public perceptions and expectations. Practically, the findings highlight how strategic framing and visual communication can strengthen societal support for low-carbon transitions, inform media guidance for public communication, and contribute to more effective governance of large-scale energy transformations. Overall, this study advances interdisciplinary research on energy governance by showing that legitimacy is not only institutionally enacted but also discursively constructed through long-term shifts in language, imagery, and governance priorities.
Plain Language Summary
This study explores how China has built public trust and acceptance for new energy development over the past two decades through changes in governance and media communication. By analyzing English-language news from China Daily, Xinhua, and People’s Daily Online, it shows how the media have helped shape public understanding of energy transition. The findings identify four stages in this process: early state-led technological exploration, local government–driven wind energy expansion, enterprise-led innovation and international cooperation, and the recent re-centralization of national strategies aligned with carbon neutrality goals. Across these stages, Chinese media used consistent value-laden expressions and increasingly emotional images to present new energy as both beneficial and necessary. This discursive process illustrates a form of “soft governance,” where meaning-making and communication support formal policies. The study highlights that legitimacy in China’s energy transition has been achieved not only through policy actions but also through the persuasive power of media narratives.
Keywords
Introduction
The global transition to low-carbon energy systems is not only a technological and economic undertaking, but also a sociopolitical process deeply embedded in evolving governance structures and cultural narratives (Meadowcroft, 2009; Sovacool, 2016). In this context, the legitimacy of new energy development—that is, the perceived appropriateness, desirability, and trustworthiness of energy-related decisions and actors—has emerged as a central concern for policymakers, stakeholders, and the public alike (Markard et al., 2016). While considerable research has focused on institutional innovations, regulatory frameworks, and policy outcomes, growing attention has been paid to the symbolic and communicative dimensions of energy governance, including the discursive construction of energy transitions through media, language, and visual culture (Carvalho, 2007; Delina, 2022).
In China, energy development has been governed through a complex and evolving configuration of state planning, market-oriented instruments, and territorially differentiated implementation arrangements. Over the past 2 decades, policy priorities related to new energy have expanded considerably, encompassing technological development, industrial upgrading, environmental protection, and climate commitments (Lewis, 2013; Kostka & Nahm, 2017; Zhang et al., 2014). Rather than following a single, linear pathway, China’s energy governance has been widely characterized as adaptive and hybrid, shaped by changing national strategies, subnational experimentation, and external pressures associated with global climate governance (Sheng, 2020).
Importantly, these evolving policy orientations do not automatically translate into public legitimacy. As previous studies suggest, legitimacy is not only produced through formal policy design or institutional performance, but also through processes of interpretation, narration, and symbolic alignment that render policy choices intelligible and acceptable to broader audiences (Hajer, 1997; Schmidt, 2008). In this respect, media discourse plays a critical mediating role by selectively foregrounding certain actors, technologies, values, and futures, thereby shaping how energy transitions are publicly understood.
At the same time, Chinese state-affiliated English-language media occupy a distinctive position in this communicative landscape. As outward-facing platforms, they function not merely as information channels but as sites where governance priorities are articulated, justified, and translated for international audiences. Despite a growing literature on China’s energy governance and policy evolution, relatively little research has examined how the legitimacy of new energy development has been discursively constructed across time through the combined use of language and visuals in such public-facing media.
This study examines how the legitimacy of new energy development has been discursively constructed in China from 2003 to 2022. Using a corpus-assisted approach integrating discourse analysis, news values theory (Bednarek & Caple, 2012), and visual semiotics (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006), it analyzes English-language reports from China Daily, Xinhua, and People’s Daily Online. Through keywords, nomination strategies, and news photographs, the study identifies four phases of energy discourse reflecting shifting governance roles and ideological framing. It demonstrates how language and imagery actively mediate legitimacy by shaping public acceptance, offering insights into soft governance in developmental states.
Literature Review
Studies of News Coverage on New Energy Application
Existing research has examined the relationship between news coverage and energy application from two main perspectives. A relatively small body of work focuses on the impact of media reporting on the energy market. For example, Gupta and Banerjee (2018) showed that negative U.S. media sentiment toward OPEC improved the financial performance of domestic renewable firms, highlighting the media’s instrumental role in shaping market behavior, particularly in commercialized media environments.
By contrast, most studies investigate how energy events and policy shifts shape media content and structure. Gearhart et al. (2019) demonstrated that changes in U.S. energy policy contributed to declining television coverage of wind energy. Grundmann et al. (2013), in a cross-national study of eight countries, found that differences in consumption patterns and development levels significantly shaped national reporting styles. In China, Chen et al. (2021) linked media favoritism to firm crash risk in the new energy sector, showing how economic performance may influence coverage within state-influenced systems.
More recent studies emphasize that news reporting is driven by broader sociopolitical contexts. Ashena et al. (2023) examined how Spanish-language media frame energy systems, Maqbool et al. (2023) traced policy inconsistency in Dutch reporting over 35 years, and Mang-Benza et al. (2021) revealed the dominance of non-Indigenous perspectives in Canadian renewable energy discourse.
Overall, research on media influence over energy markets is largely embedded in Western, commercially driven systems, whereas studies on how energy events shape coverage rest on the premise that news is socially constructed and conditioned by national contexts under both commercial and state-led governance. Methodologically, most work relies on content and circulation analysis, which captures thematic patterns but overlooks discursive mechanisms. This limitation underscores the need for linguistically oriented, multimodal approaches capable of examining how legitimacy and values are constructed through news language and imagery. The following section addresses this gap by introducing a discursive framework for analyzing energy coverage in non-Western media systems.
Studies of News Coverage on China’s New Energy Application
In China, news media operate within an institutional environment closely aligned with national information management and policy guidance (Chan, 2019; Shirk, 2011; Sun, 2012). Consequently, reporting priorities across national and local outlets tend to synchronize with official narratives and development agendas, while the energy sector itself is shaped by macro-level planning and regulatory instruments. Within this governance framework, research has mainly examined how policy shifts, technological change, and strategic priorities are reflected in media discourse, giving rise to a growing body of China-focused studies using discourse-analytic approaches. For example, Huang et al. (2023) applied NLP and social network analysis to examine authoritative framing of new energy deployment; Du and Han (2020) identified pro-nuclear framing shifts after Fukushima.
These studies employ comprehensive discourse-analytical methods, enabling a richer understanding of media representation compared to studies that focus solely on content categories or circulation metrics (as discussed in section “Studies of News Coverage on New Energy Application”). Importantly, such approaches provide insight into the broader social and policy environment of new energy adoption in China. In addition to these earlier studies, several recent publications have begun to examine legitimacy construction in China’s energy transition from different angles. Chen and Liu (2025) compares Chinese and U.S. media discourse and shows how new energy policies are framed as solutions to national energy challenges, highlighting cross-national differences in policy communication and discursive legitimation. Zheng et al. (2025) analyze how the intensity of policy narratives affects renewable-energy innovation, demonstrating the role of narrative strength in accelerating technology adoption, yet their work does not trace how legitimacy shifts across different governance phases or how multimodal discourse participates in this process. Taken together, these studies provide valuable contributions to understanding how legitimacy around renewable energy is constructed in contemporary China. However, they generally examine short time periods, specific technological sectors, or organizational-level strategies, and none provide a longitudinal, corpus-assisted multimodal analysis of how discursive legitimation evolves alongside China’s broader governance transitions. This underscores the need for a systematic diachronic investigation of discursive mechanisms—an analytical gap the present study seeks to address.
At the same time, a substantial body of research in energy governance has demonstrated that China’s energy transition cannot be characterized as a purely state-led process. Instead, it is shaped by hybrid and multi-actor governance configurations involving entrepreneurs, market mechanisms, local governments, and broader socio-cultural dynamics. Empirical studies have highlighted the role of entrepreneurial actors as key drivers of energy innovation and transition dynamics (Sheng, 2020), as well as the persistent tensions between state coordination and market logics in China’s low-carbon transition (Kostka & Nahm, 2017). Other scholars have conceptualized China’s environmental and energy governance as hybrid rather than purely authoritarian, combining centralized coordination with participatory, market-based, and localized elements (Lo, 2015; Arent et al., 2017).
In addition, research has shown that local political dynamics may complicate or reshape the implementation of centrally articulated environmental and energy plans (Kostka et al., 2013), while cultural values, social practices, and everyday meanings of energy use also play an important role in shaping transition trajectories (Sovacool et al., 2019). Together, this literature underscores the institutional, political, and socio-cultural complexity of China’s energy transition.
While these studies provide critical insights into the institutional and political complexity of China’s energy governance, they largely focus on governance structures, actor configurations, or policy implementation processes. Less attention has been paid to how such evolving and hybrid governance arrangements are discursively legitimized over time, particularly through news language and visual representation. The present study builds on this governance literature by examining how shifting governance priorities—whether state-coordinated, market-oriented, or hybrid—are normalized and made publicly intelligible through diachronic media discourse.
However, as Van Dijk (2018, 2021) notes, a gap often exists between news discourse and the social structures it is assumed to reflect. News values—understood as intersubjective cognitive representations shared by journalists and media institutions—mediate this relationship. Without analyzing news values, research risks oversimplifying the discourse–society link. To address this, the study adopts Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA), a multimodal framework for uncovering values and underlying social logics in news discourse (Bednarek & Caple, 2012, 2017). DNVA offers a precise lens on the discourse–cognition–society nexus (Van Dijk, 2018).
Moreover, existing studies are largely synchronic, overlooking how discourse changes with governance, technology, and international pressures. This study therefore integrates DNVA with a diachronic, corpus-assisted approach, analyzing English-language reports from major Chinese outlets (2003–2022) to trace shifts in framing and evolving news values.
In addition to discourse-analytic and policy-oriented studies, a substantial body of empirical research has examined public perceptions of renewable energy and climate-related policies in China through survey and experimental designs. These studies consistently show that Chinese citizens express strong support for renewable energy expansion, particularly when it is framed in terms of air-quality improvement, national technological progress, and energy security (D. Chen et al., 2016; Ozcan et al., 2025). Large-scale surveys also reveal that perceived fairness, cost considerations, and local environmental impacts significantly influence acceptance of specific projects such as wind turbines and photovoltaic installations (Liu et al., 2019). Experimental evidence further suggests that framing strategies—such as emphasizing co-benefits, social participation, or national leadership—substantially shape public judgment of energy initiatives and climate commitments (D. Chen et al., 2016; Ozcan et al., 2025). These studies provide important attitudinal evidence of how legitimacy is negotiated among different social groups. Our study complements this line of research by demonstrating how media discourse constructs the symbolic, cognitive and affective environment within which such public attitudes are formed.
Agenda-Setting, Agenda-Building and Argumentative Dimensions of Energy News Discourse
A substantial body of communication research has examined how news media influence public attention, issue salience, and interpretive frameworks through agenda-setting and agenda-building processes. Classical agenda-setting theory emphasizes the media’s capacity to shape what issues audiences think about by systematically prioritizing certain topics over others (McCombs & Shaw, 1972; McCombs et al. 2014). Subsequent developments have extended this perspective by highlighting second-level agenda-setting, framing, and agenda-building, which stress how issue attributes, causal interpretations, and normative evaluations are constructed through interactions among media, political actors, and institutional contexts (Landerer, 2013; McCombs et al., 2014).
Within energy and environmental communication, agenda-setting approaches have been widely applied to examine how media attention to energy issues fluctuates in response to policy events, technological developments, or crises, and how such attention structures public awareness and concern. However, as several scholars have noted, agenda-setting theory primarily focuses on issue salience and prominence, offering relatively limited tools for unpacking the discursive and evaluative mechanisms through which meanings, values, and legitimacy are constructed within news texts (Brooks et al., 2024; Carvalho, 2007).
Closely related to agenda-building, argumentation-oriented approaches shift analytical attention from what issues are covered to how claims are justified, contested, and made persuasive in public discourse. Argumentation theory conceptualizes news discourse as a site of socio-discursive reasoning, where legitimacy is negotiated through argumentative moves, framing devices, and implicit value hierarchies rather than through formal logical debate alone (Amossy, 2009; Morasso, 2012). From this perspective, media texts do not merely transmit information but actively construct interpretive frames that guide audiences’ evaluations of actors, policies, and futures.
Recent studies have applied argumentative and discursive frameworks to environmental and energy debates, demonstrating how media narratives mobilize responsibility, risk, morality, and progress to legitimize or problematize energy transitions (Brooks et al., 2024; Landerer, 2013). These approaches underline that legitimacy is not simply the outcome of agenda visibility, but is produced through discursively embedded value judgments, narrative alignments, and symbolic associations that render policy choices reasonable, desirable, or inevitable.
Building on these insights, the present study does not adopt agenda-setting or argumentation theory as its primary analytical framework. Instead, it integrates their core concerns—issue salience, evaluative framing, and persuasive meaning-making—within a Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) framework. DNVA allows for a systematic examination of how newsworthiness, evaluation, and legitimacy are constructed through recurring linguistic and visual patterns, thereby bridging agenda-level salience with the discursive and argumentative processes through which energy transitions are publicly legitimized over time.
The Discursive News Values Analysis Approach and Its Adaptation in the Present Study
News values are commonly understood as criteria guiding journalistic selection and framing (Richardson, 2007), functioning as internalized assumptions (Cotter, 2010), shared interpretive categories (Fowler, 1991), or intersubjective mental models of newsworthiness. Building on this cognitive foundation, Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) reconceptualizes news values as socially constructed and realized through linguistic and visual choices in news discourse (Bednarek & Caple, 2017; Bednarek et al., 2020). DNVA enables systematic examination of how language and images render actors, events, and issues newsworthy, revealing underlying values and ideologies.
Methodologically, DNVA identifies news values through observable discourse features such as lexical salience, evaluative language, and multimodal symbolism, while integrating textual and visual analysis. Recent studies have combined DNVA with corpus-based methods to detect diachronic and cross-cultural patterns, including analyses of COVID-19 vaccine reporting (Chen & Liu, 2023a), Confucius discourse in The Times (Chen & Liu, 2023b), and climate change coverage in Chinese media (Chen & Liu, 2024).
Drawing on these approaches, this study adopts a diachronic, corpus-assisted DNVA framework to examine how new energy development has been legitimated in China’s English-language state media over 2 decades, integrating keyword analysis, naming strategies, and visual semiotics to link discourse with changing governance logics. Accordingly, the study addresses the following research questions:
(1) How have Chinese English-language news outlets defined and portrayed new energy from 2003 to 2022?
(2) What discursive news values have been constructed through these portrayals, and how have they contributed to the legitimation of new energy development?
(3) How have these news values evolved across governance phases, and how do they reflect shifts in China’s energy policy and sociopolitical agenda?
Data and Methods
Data
We established diachronic comparative corpora from 2003 to 2022, with 5 years for each phase, for the following reasons. The National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is held every 5 years to formulate the national development plans for the next 5 years. Thus, the 5-year period following each National Congress of the CPC usually experiences important reforms and changes in social development, including new energy application. We selected the first phase from 2003 to 2007, the 5-year period after the 16th National Congress of the CPC (held in 2002), because the development of new energy in China was initiated during this period (in 2005), which was marked by the introduction of the Renewable Energy Law of China (Liu et al., 2019). The first phase is followed by the second phase, which is set from 2008 to 2012, the 5-year period after the 17th National Congress of the CPC (held in 2007). Similarly, the third phase is from 2013 to 2017, and the fourth phase is from 2018 to 2022.
We chose three of China’s mainstream international media websites, China Daily, People’s Daily and Xinhua, to collect English-language news reports related to new energy. The choice of English-language media outlets is a deliberate methodological decision aligned with the aims of this study. China Daily, Xinhua, and People’s Daily function as key public-facing and internationally oriented news platforms through which China communicates policy priorities, governance rationales, and development narratives to global audiences. Rather than representing domestic public opinion, these outlets provide an institutionalized discursive space where official policy orientations are translated into internationally legible narratives.
Focusing on English-language reporting therefore allows this study to examine how the legitimacy of China’s energy transition is constructed and projected in global communicative contexts, particularly through linguistic and visual strategies designed for international readership. This focus is consistent with previous research that treats English-language Chinese media as a distinct and analytically meaningful site for studying policy communication and international legitimacy-building.
To ensure that the selected reports address new energy to a significant extent (not just mentioning it), we manually surveyed these online news websites and searched for a corpus that included only those reports with “new energy” as the theme of the whole body of the report. We found different maximum quantities of news reports in the four phases, which increased progressively (Table 1). Considering the different amounts of news reports in the different phases and the different word counts of the four news corpora, percentages were used in the statistical analysis instead of total numbers.
Four News Corpora of the Chinese Mainstream Media During Four Different Periods.
To further illustrate the diachronic evolution of media attention to new energy, we supplemented Table 1 with a bar chart depicting the annual number of news reports from 2003 to 2022 (see Figure 1). The visualization shows a clear and steady increase in reporting volume over time, rather than sharp short-term fluctuations or isolated peaks. This gradual upward trend indicates a sustained expansion of media attention to new energy, corresponding to its rising policy salience and progressive institutional embedding within China’s development agenda (Kostka & Nahm, 2017; Zhang et al., 2014).
Annual number of new energy–related news reports in Chinese English-language media (2003–2022), showing a steady increase in coverage across four 5-year phases aligned with national planning cycles.
Notably, the absence of abrupt spikes suggests that the growth of coverage is not driven by single disruptive events, but reflects a cumulative process shaped by long-term policy planning, industrial scaling, and the strategic repositioning of new energy within national development frameworks (Lewis, 2013; Sheng, 2020). Periods of more pronounced growth coincide broadly with phases of intensified policy articulation and implementation, including the post–Renewable Energy Law expansion of wind power after the mid-2000s, the diversification of energy technologies and market-oriented reforms during the 2010s, and the heightened prominence of climate-related commitments following the announcement of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals (Kostka & Nahm, 2017).
This pattern supports our decision to adopt 5-year phases aligned with national planning cycles, as it suggests that changes in media output are better understood as part of a gradual governance transition rather than as reactions to short-term political or economic shocks. Similar observations have been made in studies of energy and environmental communication, which emphasize that media attention tends to track longer-term policy trajectories and institutional consolidation rather than episodic events alone (Carvalho, 2007; Schmidt, 2008). The bar chart therefore serves as a descriptive foundation for the subsequent discourse analysis, providing temporal context for interpreting shifts in keywords, nomination strategies, and visual representations across phases.
Simultaneously, the news photographs illustrated within the news reports were also collected, establishing four visual corpora. As the quantities of photographs were also different for the four phases, we analyzed the news values established by visual devices based on percentages.
To enhance transparency and replicability, the corpus construction followed a clearly defined and documented procedure. News reports were retrieved manually from the official English-language websites of China Daily, the People’s Daily and Xinhua using each platform’s internal search function with the keyword “new energy.” Retrieval was restricted to the four predefined periods (2003–2007, 2008–2012, 2013–2017, and 2018–2022).
Only articles in which new energy constituted the primary theme of the report were included. Reports were excluded if references to new energy were incidental (e.g., brief mentions in background information, policy lists, or unrelated contexts). All retrieved items were logged with their title, publication date, source outlet, and URL, and duplicate or syndicated versions were removed.
To ensure consistency in determining thematic relevance, inclusion and exclusion criteria were jointly discussed and applied by the authors. Ambiguous cases were reviewed and resolved through consensus. The full list of included articles and associated photographs has been archived by the authors and can be made available upon reasonable request.
Methods
By adopting a corpus-assisted discourse-analytic approach, this study analyzes English-language news corpora from Chinese mainstream media across three interconnected analytical dimensions: (1) keywords, which indicate the semantic focus of the reporting; (2) nominations of new energy, which demonstrate how the news entity was defined; and (3) news photographs, which show how news events were visually presented. The keywords and the nominations were analyzed by the corpus analysis tool AntConc 3.3.4w, and the photographs were examined manually. This design follows established practices in corpus-assisted discourse studies, where quantitative lexical patterns are used as entry points for qualitative, theory-driven interpretation rather than as ends in themselves (Baker, 2006; Bednarek & Caple, 2017).
Quantitative measures including frequencies and percentages are used descriptively to identify salient discursive patterns across corpora, rather than for inferential statistical testing, which is not the primary aim of corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The analysis methods are explained in detail as follows.
Keywords were identified using AntConc 3.3.4w (Anthony, 2022) to capture statistically salient lexical items that distinguish each phase-specific corpus from the remaining three phases combined as a reference corpus. Keyword analysis in this study serves a diagnostic rather than purely descriptive function, allowing us to identify discursively salient themes that warrant further contextual and interpretive analysis (Baker, 2006).
Keyness and frequency were used jointly, with the top 30 keywords selected for each phase. Function words (e.g., be, have, would) were excluded to foreground semantically meaningful items. Importantly, keyword lists were not interpreted in isolation: concordance analysis was systematically conducted to examine how keywords function in context, thereby linking lexical salience to discursive meaning-making rather than surface frequency alone (Stubbs, 2001).
Nomination analysis focuses on how “new energy” is discursively named, categorized, and stabilized across time. Following Van Leeuwen’s (2008) theory of social actor representation and Fairclough’s (2013) view of nomination as a core discursive strategy, we treat naming not as a purely lexical phenomenon but as a meaning-making practice that encodes evaluation, legitimacy, and governance orientations.
Operationally, we searched for collocates of energy within a ±3-word window and manually examined concordance lines to ensure that these instances referred specifically to new energy. Based on this contextual verification, recurrent nomination categories (e.g., renewable energy, clean energy, green energy, alternative energy) were identified and quantified.
While we acknowledge that Named Entity Recognition (NER) tools can offer fine-grained categorization of entity types (e.g., persons, organizations, locations), we deliberately adopted a function-oriented categorization rather than a formal NER taxonomy. In this study, proper nouns are analyzed not for their ontological type, but for their discursive role in representing governance actors (e.g., state institutions, local governments, enterprises, international organizations) and governance scales across phases. This aligns with discourse-analytic traditions that prioritize interpretive relevance over exhaustive formal classification (Van Leeuwen, 2008; Wodak & Meyer, 2016).
We acknowledge that discourse-analytic traditions place significant emphasis on enunciative responsibility, reported speech, and the use of speech verbs and adverbials to trace attribution, stance, and dialogic positioning (e.g., Fairclough, 2004; Wodak & Meyer, 2016). However, the present study does not focus on interactional positioning or dialogic struggle between competing voices. Instead, it examines how legitimacy is discursively stabilized over time within public-facing, state-affiliated media discourse. In this institutionalized communicative context, direct quotation and explicit attribution are relatively limited and highly standardized, while evaluative meaning is more consistently realized through lexical selection, nomination strategies, thematic salience, and multimodal representation. Accordingly, rather than conducting a fine-grained analysis of reported speech or enunciative responsibility, we focus on recurrent discursive patterns that operate at the level of news values and legitimation, following the Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) framework (Bednarek & Caple, 2017). This analytical choice reflects a deliberate alignment between research questions, data characteristics, and methodological scope, rather than an oversight of interactional discourse features.
News photographs were analyzed using a qualitative–quantitative multimodal approach grounded in visual grammar (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006) and Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA; Bednarek & Caple, 2012, 2017).
To enhance analytical transparency and systematicity, visual analysis was conducted through explicit categorization and quantification of three interrelated dimensions: (1) visual content types, (2) compositional and technical features, and (3) color palettes and modality.
First, visual content was categorized according to the dominant represented participants and objects in each photograph, including: renewable energy infrastructures (e.g., wind turbines, photovoltaic panels), human actors (e.g., workers, engineers, officials), institutional or ceremonial settings, natural landscapes, and mixed scenes. Frequencies and percentages of each category were calculated for each phase to identify shifts in visual focus over time.
Second, compositional and technical features were coded following visual grammar conventions, including camera distance (long, medium, close), vertical angle (high, eye-level, low), horizontal perspective (frontal vs. oblique), and representational salience (foregrounding vs. backgrounding of energy technologies). These features were quantified to assess how visual prominence, authority, and viewer engagement were systematically constructed across phases.
Third, color palettes were categorized into dominant tonal schemes—cool/desaturated, warm/high-modality, and mixed palettes—based on overall hue, saturation, and illumination. This categorization allows for a comparative assessment of affective orientation, as color modality is closely associated with evaluative stance, futurity, and positivity in visual news discourse (Bednarek & Caple, 2017; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006).
Coding was conducted manually because existing automated vision tools remain limited in reliably capturing context-dependent news values such as positivity, eliteness, and futurity, which require interpretive alignment with textual context. To mitigate subjectivity, all coding decisions were guided by explicit theoretical definitions derived from DNVA (see Supplemental Appendix A), and ambiguous cases were jointly reviewed by the authors to reach consensus.
Importantly, visual features were not analyzed in isolation. Following the DNVA framework, quantified visual patterns were systematically interpreted in relation to keyword distributions and nomination strategies, allowing us to examine how linguistic and visual resources jointly construct news values and contribute to the discursive legitimation of new energy across governance phases.
Finally, the identification of news values does not rely on impressionistic reading, but on systematic triangulation of keyword patterns, nomination strategies, and visual resources, following the DNVA framework (Bednarek & Caple, 2017; Bednarek et al., 2020). Quantitative indicators (frequencies and percentages) are used to establish salience and consistency, while qualitative interpretation links these patterns to legitimacy-building processes.
We acknowledge that machine-learning techniques such as sentiment classifiers, NER, or topic modeling (e.g., LDA) can be useful for large-scale exploratory analysis. However, such methods are not adopted here for three reasons.
First, the study is theory-driven rather than inductively exploratory, focusing on legitimacy and governance-oriented discourse rather than latent topic discovery.
Second, topic modeling tends to abstract away from discursive function and evaluative meaning, which are central to our research questions.
Third, DNVA explicitly requires close attention to semiotic realization and contextual meaning, which remains difficult to operationalize reliably through automated tools alone.
Importantly, textual and visual resources were not treated as independent analytical layers. Following the DNVA framework, they were examined as complementary semiotic resources that jointly contribute to the construction of news values and legitimacy. Keyword patterns and nomination strategies were therefore interpreted in relation to recurrent visual motifs, compositional choices, and affective cues, allowing us to assess how linguistic and visual elements reinforce or amplify shared evaluative meanings.
While this choice does not capture the full range of domestic Chinese-language media discourse, it enables a focused analysis of public-facing discursive legitimation strategies, which constitute the central concern of the present study.
Results
Guided by the established analytical framework, the following section presents the empirical findings across three dimensions: keyword usage, nomination strategies, and visual representations.
Keywords and the Evolving Thematic Focus of Reporting
The four diachronic corpora were compared and analyzed using AntConc 3.3.4w. Keyword lists for each phase were generated based on word frequency and keyness values, with these values indicated in parentheses following each keyword (e.g., oil [95/86] indicates a frequency of 95 and a keyness value of 86). The keywords were subsequently categorized by part of speech, with a focus on common and proper nouns. As widely adopted in corpus-assisted discourse studies, keyword analysis serves as a diagnostic tool for identifying shifting semantic priorities and underlying discursive orientations across time (Baker, 2006; Bednarek & Caple, 2017). Table 2 illustrates the diachronic patterns emerging from these keyword lists, which not only signal changes in topical emphasis but also reveal how new energy has been discursively framed and legitimized across different governance phases. To facilitate interpretation, representative concordance examples are provided in Examples 1 to 29 in Table S1 (Supplemental Appendix B).
The Top Keywords in Reporting on New Energy During Different Phases by the Chinese Mainstream Media.
Common Noun Keywords and Shifting Modes of Thematic Legitimation
Common noun keywords demonstrate a clear evolution in the thematic focus of new energy reporting over the past 2 decades. In Phase 1 (2003–2007), keywords such as gasoline, ethanol, biodiesel, oil, and petrol dominate the lexical field, indicating a media focus on reforming existing fossil-fuel systems rather than promoting a distinct low-carbon transition. Concordance lines show that these terms are embedded in policy-oriented narratives emphasizing fuel substitution, energy security, and technological feasibility. As illustrated in Examples 1 to 3 (Supplemental Appendix B), reports foreground state initiatives promoting ethanol-blended gasoline, coal liquefaction, and alternative fuel production. This pattern suggests that legitimacy during the early stage is primarily constructed through technocratic rationality and state authority, a mode of legitimation commonly associated with early transition phases characterized by experimental technologies and strong central coordination (Sovacool, 2016).
By Phase 2 (2008–2012), the keyword profile shifts decisively toward wind energy. The term wind (610/167) exhibits the highest frequency and keyness, supported by related terms such as turbine(s), offshore, mw, gw, copper, and industries. Together, these keywords point to an infrastructure- and capacity-oriented discourse centered on large-scale deployment. Concordance evidence (Examples 4–8, Supplemental Appendix B) highlights extensive coverage of offshore wind projects, particularly in coastal regions such as Guangdong Province. Compared with Phase 1, legitimacy in this period is increasingly grounded in material scale, industrial capacity, and visible infrastructure, reflecting a governance logic in which demonstrable expansion and output serve as key sources of policy credibility (Ahlers & Shen, 2018; Bridge et al., 2013).
In Phase 3 (2013–2017), the lexical field becomes more diversified, with the emergence of clean energy types such as nuclear, photovoltaic, solar, shale gas, and methanol. Concordance lines indicate that these keywords are frequently embedded in evaluative contexts highlighting environmental benefits, technological innovation, and market competitiveness. Examples 9 to 12 (Supplemental Appendix B) show how photovoltaic storage is linked to electric vehicle branding and how methanol vehicles are framed through the entrepreneurial achievements of firms such as Geely. This phase marks a shift toward innovation-driven and market-oriented legitimation, consistent with governance research emphasizing the growing role of firms, entrepreneurial actors, and hybrid state–market arrangements in China’s energy transition (Kostka & Nahm, 2017; Sheng, 2020).
By Phase 4 (2018–2022), keyword usage moves away from specific technologies toward abstract, normative, and future-oriented concepts. Lexemes such as green, clean, carbon, neutrality, emissions, and peak dominate the discourse. Rather than detailing technological mechanisms, these keywords align reporting with global climate governance frameworks and China’s long-term carbon neutrality commitments. As illustrated in Examples 13 to 17 (Supplemental Appendix B), such terms are frequently embedded in references to national plans and international obligations. Legitimacy in this phase is thus consolidated through moral authority, strategic vision, and international responsibility, a discursive shift widely associated with contemporary climate governance narratives (Bernstein, 2015; Newell et al., 2012).
Taken together, the diachronic evolution of common noun keywords demonstrates a systematic progression in thematic framing—from fossil-fuel transformation (Phase 1), to infrastructure-led wind expansion (Phase 2), to diversified clean energy innovation (Phase 3), and finally to climate-oriented normative planning (Phase 4). In line with discursive institutionalist perspectives, these patterns indicate that media discourse actively participates in rearticulating the meaning and legitimacy of energy development alongside shifting governance priorities, rather than merely reflecting policy change (Schmidt, 2008). In this sense, keywords do not simply reflect surface-level topics; rather, they provide empirical entry points for examining how legitimacy is discursively articulated through recurring semantic patterns across different governance phases.
Proper Noun Keywords and Evolving Representations of Actors and Governance Scales
Alongside thematic shifts, proper noun keywords reveal complementary changes in how actors and governance scales are represented.
In Phase 1, proper nouns such as EAST, ITER, Qinshan, and CBM primarily refer to scientific institutions or experimental facilities. Concordance lines confirm that these entities are framed as centrally coordinated, state-backed projects (Examples 18–19, Supplemental Appendix B), reinforcing a technocratic model of legitimacy grounded in scientific authority and centralized planning—an arrangement widely identified in early-stage, state-led energy transitions (Sovacool, 2016).
During Phase 2, proper nouns increasingly reference geographical locations associated with wind energy deployment, including Inner Mongolia, Shuangliu, Nantong, Xintai, and Jilin. As shown in Examples 20 to 22 (Supplemental Appendix B), local governments are portrayed as key intermediaries responsible for translating national priorities into concrete projects. This shift foregrounds subnational implementation capacity as an important source of legitimacy, echoing governance studies that highlight the central role of local authorities in scaling renewable energy infrastructure in China (Ahlers & Shen, 2018; Kostka & Nahm, 2017). At the same time, the appearance of enterprise-related and foreign proper nouns (e.g., Wanxiang, Longyuan, Singapore, Osaka) signals the early emergence of market and transnational dynamics.
In Phase 3, enterprise- and internationally oriented proper nouns dominate the keyword list. Domestic firms (PV, CGN, Geely, BYD, Panda) and international partners (CRI, Apple, South Africa, Iran) feature prominently, highlighting narratives of technological leadership, overseas expansion, and global cooperation (Examples 23–29, Supplemental Appendix B). This discursive configuration aligns with research emphasizing the growing role of entrepreneurial actors and cross-border partnerships in shaping China’s energy transition under hybrid governance arrangements (Newell et al., 2012; Sheng, 2020).
By Phase 4, proper nouns related to specific technologies, locations, or enterprises become scarce. Instead, national-level institutions and strategic frameworks—such as the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s 14th 5-Year Plan, and the National People’s Congress—dominate the discourse. As seen in Examples 13 to 17 (Supplemental Appendix B), energy transformation is framed as a national mission closely tied to climate diplomacy and international leadership, reflecting the recentralization tendencies observed in climate governance scholarship (Bernstein, 2015; Newell et al., 2012).
Overall, the diachronic trajectory of proper noun usage illustrates a broader evolution in actor representation: from scientific institutions (Phase 1), to local governments (Phase 2), to entrepreneurial and transnational actors (Phase 3), and finally to centralized national leadership (Phase 4). Together with the thematic shifts identified above, these patterns provide converging evidence that changes in energy discourse are systematic, multi-layered, and closely aligned with evolving governance logics.
Nominations of New Energy
In addition to the lexical evolution captured in the keyword analysis, the nomination strategies employed by Chinese mainstream media reveal a remarkable consistency in how new energy has been labeled and legitimized across the two-decade period. Using AntConc 3.3.4w, we identified several high-frequency noun phrases—such as renewable energy, clean energy, green energy, and alternative energy—that were recurrent across all four diachronic corpora (see Table 3). This recurrence indicates that, despite the changing technological landscape, the discursive framing of new energy remained anchored in a set of positively valenced, policy-aligned descriptors. To facilitate contextual interpretation, Examples 30 to 33 in Table S2 in Supplemental Appendix B presents representative sentences featuring the selected nomination expressions, illustrating how they define and frame new energy within media narratives.
Nominations of New Energy in Chinese News Reporting During Different Phases by the Chinese Mainstream Media.
These consistent nominations function as evaluative labels that attach normative meaning to the notion of energy development. Phrases such as clean energy and green energy not only signal environmental friendliness but also encode the government’s long-standing ambition to modernize its energy infrastructure while maintaining ecological responsibility. For instance, early news articles emphasize that although the application of clean energy was still in its infancy, the emergence of technologies such as hydrogen-powered buses and compound fuels offered hope for the future. Similarly, references to green energy frequently co-occurred with narratives of national advancement and global competitiveness, presenting China’s transition as both urgent and aspirational.
The term renewable energy appears particularly significant in shaping a sense of responsible governance. It is often embedded in discussions that contrast historical reliance on coal with emerging commitments to environmentally sustainable sources, underscoring a discourse of “catching up” with global norms. These references help portray China not only as a technological innovator but also as a normative actor aligned with international environmental expectations.
In later phases, the nomination alternative energy became prominent in articulating a policy shift away from fossil fuel dependence. This term was regularly used to describe China’s strategic direction under top-level policy guidance, such as the development of a clean, low-carbon, and efficient energy system under the 5-Year Plan framework. These expressions serve to reinforce the coherence between discourse and institutional ambition, offering a vocabulary that stabilizes public understanding and supports policy continuity.
The persistence of these nomination patterns can be interpreted as a form of ideological embedding (Fairclough, 2013), where language is used to naturalize the preferred meanings and intentions of the state. Through repeated usage, such nominations cultivate public familiarity and reduce cognitive dissonance in response to shifting technological specifics. This is especially crucial in an environment like China’s, where state-driven communication plays a vital role in managing social consensus and promoting legitimacy.
From a policy perspective, this stability supports what Hall (1997) and Béland and Cox (2016) describe as the maintenance of a “core policy paradigm”. While tools and technologies may evolve, the overarching narrative—framed by nominations that emphasize cleanliness, renewability and sustainability—remains ideationally stable. This suggests that China’s energy discourse does not merely reflect changes in infrastructure or governance logic but functions proactively to sustain legitimacy through the controlled evolution of public language.
In sum, the consistent use of these nominations reflects both rhetorical strategy and institutional discipline. It demonstrates how discursive stability is maintained in service of broader governance objectives, framing new energy as not only a technical solution but also a moral and developmental imperative.
Visual Representations and the Sensory Construction of Energy Discourse
To examine how visual discourse contributes to the legitimation of new energy, all news photographs in the four diachronic corpora were analyzed using a systematic qualitative–quantitative multimodal framework. Following visual grammar (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006) and Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA; Bednarek & Caple, 2012, 2017), each image was coded along four dimensions: (1) representational content, (2) compositional structure, (3) color palette, and (4) depicted technological devices. This coding scheme allows visual meaning to be operationalized and compared diachronically without reducing interpretation to purely impressionistic description.
Representational content was categorized according to the dominant visual participant, including natural landscapes, energy infrastructures (e.g., wind turbines, solar panels), institutional settings, and human actors. Technological devices were coded based on the primary energy-related object depicted in the image, such as wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, vehicles, or exhibition prototypes. Frequencies were calculated for each category to identify dominant visual anchors across phases.
Color palettes were coded into three broad categories commonly used in visual discourse studies: (1) cool/desaturated tones (e.g., gray, muted blue), (2) warm/high-modality tones (e.g., red, gold, yellow), and (3) neutral or mixed palettes.
This categorization captures affective orientation rather than fine-grained hue variation, aligning with DNVA’s focus on evaluative meaning rather than aesthetic detail. The distribution of color categories was calculated as percentages for each phase to trace diachronic shifts in affective framing.
Compositional structure was coded using standard visual grammar parameters, including camera distance (long shot vs. close-up), angle (eye-level, low-angle), and salience (foregrounded vs. backgrounded elements). These features were used to assess how visual prominence and viewer alignment contribute to news values such as positivity, eliteness, and impact.
Across the four phases, the results reveal a clear diachronic trajectory from low visual specificity and symbolic indirection toward highly standardized, iconic, and affectively positive representations. Representative images from each phase are provided via DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17946115.
In Phase 1 (2003–2007), approximately 80% of news photographs featured generalized or tangential visual content—such as natural landscapes, institutional interiors, or automobile exhibitions—with only weak or indirect links to renewable energy technologies (Figure S1). Images of flowering fields or rocky terrain were loosely associated with biofuels or fossil alternatives, while photographs of diesel vehicles at exhibitions conveyed a tentative narrative of technological experimentation. This visual ambiguity reflects what DNVA terms low representational specificity and limited salience, indicating an early stage in which “new energy” lacked a stable visual referent. The dominant use of cool, desaturated color palettes (e.g., gray and muted blue tones) further contributed to a restrained affective register, consistent with technocratic legitimation strategies and the relatively low public visibility of energy transition at this stage (Sovacool, 2016).
By Phase 2 (2008–2012), visual discourse becomes markedly more concrete and iconic. Around 77% of photographs explicitly depict wind turbines, frequently arranged in long shots and upward camera angles, and set against bright skies, sunrise scenes, or strong natural lighting (Figure S2). High-modality color schemes dominated by red, gold, and yellow—often reinforced by symbolic elements such as red safety helmets or turbines featured in national celebrations—imbue these images with strong affective positivity and national significance. Within the DNVA framework, these visuals strongly activate news values of positivity, eliteness, and impact (Bednarek & Caple, 2012), presenting wind energy as technologically advanced, state-endorsed, and publicly celebratory. This visual consolidation mirrors the lexical dominance of wind identified in the keyword analysis, demonstrating a close alignment between visual salience and thematic focus.
In Phase 3 (2013–2017) and Phase 4 (2018–2022), the visual repertoire expands but remains highly selective. Wind turbines and photovoltaic panels constitute approximately 82% and 69% of images respectively (Figures S3 and S4), despite textual references to a wider range of energy forms such as nuclear power, methanol, or shale gas. This visual concentration suggests a process of semiotic simplification, whereby complex and heterogeneous energy transitions are rendered publicly intelligible through a limited set of easily recognizable and aesthetically appealing icons. Warm color palettes, high illumination, and expansive spatial compositions—such as vast solar arrays reflecting sunlight or turbine blades silhouetted against golden skies—construct a visual narrative of optimism, futurity, and inevitability. These affective cues correspond closely with the rise of abstract and normative keywords such as green, carbon, neutrality, and peak, reinforcing the moral and future-oriented framing of energy governance (Bernstein, 2015; Newell et al., 2012).
Across all phases, we observe an increasing emphasis on representational salience and interactive meaning. Energy infrastructures are progressively foregrounded as central visual participants, and human figures—when present—are typically depicted as workers, engineers, or observers oriented toward these structures. Such configurations humanize technological transformation and foster affective legitimation by linking renewable energy to labor, national pride, and collective progress. In DNVA terms, these visual strategies amplify news values related to human interest and collective significance, complementing the evaluative and normative work performed by lexical nominations.
Overall, the diachronic evolution of visual discourse reveals a shift from semiotic ambiguity to visual stabilization and affective intensification. Rather than functioning as mere illustrations, news photographs actively participate in the discursive construction of legitimacy by embedding new energy within a sensory regime of positivity, familiarity, and national aspiration. When considered alongside the keyword and nomination analyses, the visual findings provide converging evidence that China’s energy transition is legitimized through a coordinated multimodal strategy, in which textual and visual resources jointly normalize evolving governance priorities and policy trajectories.
Discussion
As demonstrated across the four phases, textual and visual elements consistently work together to construct shared news values, such as Positivity, Eliteness, etc., rather than operating as separate meaning-making channels. The systematic alignment between lexical salience, naming practices, and visual composition indicates that legitimacy is not produced by isolated discursive features, but through their patterned co-occurrence across modalities.
This study provides a discourse-based longitudinal analysis of how the legitimacy of new energy development in China has been constructed through evolving media representations and shifting governance strategies. By examining the diachronic patterns of keywords, nomination strategies, and visual framing across four historical phases (2003–2022), the findings reveal how media discourse has both reflected and reinforced broader policy transitions and sociopolitical objectives within China’s energy governance landscape.
Constructing Legitimacy Through Shifting Discourse Focus
The keyword analysis reveals a clear diachronic evolution in the framing of new energy development in Chinese media discourse, reflecting broader transformations in governance priorities and legitimation strategies. In the early 2000s, the discourse emphasized technological substitution of traditional fossil fuels, with keywords such as ethanol, biodiesel, and gasoline dominating the narrative. These lexical patterns foreground experimental and transitional technologies, positioning new energy as a technical supplement rather than a systemic alternative, which corresponds to what Geels (2002) classifies as a niche-innovation phase supported within protected policy spaces.
During the second phase, the media focus shifted toward wind energy, exemplified by the prominence of keywords like wind, turbine, and offshore. The concentration of these terms, combined with their frequent co-occurrence with place-based references, signals a discursive consolidation of wind power as the flagship technology of China’s renewable agenda. This transition aligns with a period of infrastructural scaling driven by local governments under the central government’s directive decentralization model (Che et al., 2023). The salience of geographically grounded keywords also reflects the territorialization of energy discourse, whereby regions became emblematic of China’s renewable ambition.
The third phase (2013–2017) marked a diversification of the energy discourse, incorporating references to solar, photovoltaic, nuclear, shale gas, and methanol. Rather than displacing earlier technologies, this lexical expansion reflects a discursive logic of portfolio building, consistent with a multi-track innovation strategy supported by domestic enterprises and transnational partnerships (Lewis, 2013; Urban et al., 2016). This pluralization reflects the shift from mono-technology advocacy to a multi-track innovation strategy supported by both domestic enterprises and transnational partnerships (Lewis, 2013; Urban et al., 2016). It is also indicative of a hybrid governance mode wherein market actors assume a more prominent role in driving energy transformation, legitimized through discursive emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurship, and global integration.
In the final phase (2018–2022), the energy discourse became more abstract and normatively charged, centering on keywords such as carbon, neutrality, emissions, and peak. This shift signals a discursive reorientation from the technological and material aspects of energy production to broader ideological commitments aligned with global climate governance frameworks (Dryzek et al., 2011; Keohane & Victor, 2011). The use of aspirational terms such as green and clean not only reflects China’s response to the Paris Agreement and its carbon neutrality pledge (Stern & Xie, 2022), but also represents a form of “anticipatory governance,” where legitimacy is projected through symbolic alignment with future-oriented environmental visions (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015).
Overall, this discursive trajectory—from technological substitution to symbolic sustainability—illustrates how media narratives adapt to shifting governance logics while maintaining ideological coherence. Rather than signaling abrupt discursive breaks, the transition across phases reveals a cumulative reorientation of legitimation strategies, embedding energy transitions within a broader narrative of national modernization and international responsibility. This finding reinforces prior scholarship on the role of discourse in shaping socio-technical transitions (Aklin & Urpelainen, 2018; Meadowcroft, 2009) and highlights the significance of linguistic and symbolic resources in building support for long-term climate governance.
Naming Strategies and Policy Continuity
While the focus of keywords has evolved across different phases of China’s energy discourse, the naming strategies used to refer to new energy have remained remarkably stable. Across all four periods, the media consistently employed normative labels such as “clean energy,”“renewable energy,”“green energy,” and “alternative energy.” This stability suggests that discursive change operates primarily at the level of thematic emphasis rather than evaluative framing, enabling continuity in legitimacy construction despite shifts in policy instruments and actors.
The stability of such evaluative language functions as a mechanism of symbolic governance. As Hajer (1997) argues, language plays a constitutive role in structuring policy meaning and maintaining continuity across changing political and technological contexts. By persistently attaching new energy to positive moral attributes—cleanliness, renewability, environmental friendliness—the Chinese media help construct a discursive field where energy transformation is not merely a technical process, but a socially virtuous and politically desirable undertaking. This form of value-laden nomination sustains legitimacy by foregrounding normative alignment rather than technological specifics.
Moreover, this consistent naming practice reflects what Schmidt (2008) terms “discursive institutionalism,” whereby ideas are both communicated and stabilized through the repetition of legitimizing terms within institutional and media settings. The persistence of these labels serves to naturalize the vision of a low-carbon future and to align energy policy with widely accepted values such as sustainability, innovation, and global cooperation (Voß & Freeman, 2016). In doing so, these naming conventions contribute to what Fløttum and Gjerstad (2017) call “discursive legitimation loops”—where language, policy, and public perception reinforce each other to maintain support for long-term goals.
This finding resonates with studies of China’s policy trajectory, which emphasize the strategic role of discourse in ensuring political stability and policy continuity amidst rapid socioeconomic change. For example, Zhou et al. (2022) and Genus (2016) document how central government masterplans—such as the 5-Year Plans and national development strategies—have continually defined clean energy as a pillar of both ecological civilization and economic modernization. In this context, media discourse acts as a transmission belt that reinforces top-down policy orientations while embedding them in everyday public narratives.
Notably, this persistent naming strategy also serves a boundary-setting function. By consistently referring to certain energy types as “clean” or “green,” the discourse implicitly excludes other energy sources—such as coal and oil—from the category of socially legitimate energy. This aligns with Bacchi’s (2009)“What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” framework, which posits that policy discourses not only describe the world but actively shape how problems and solutions are constructed. The repetitive use of normative labels thus helps reframe the problem of energy as one of moral and national responsibility, where new energy is positioned as both a solution and a symbol of progress.
In summary, the stability of naming strategies across different governance phases reveals a form of discursive path dependency. While the material basis and actors of energy development have changed over time—from state laboratories to local governments, and later to enterprises—the moral vocabulary used to describe these efforts has remained strikingly coherent. This coherence has helped anchor public narratives of legitimacy, ensuring that energy transitions are interpreted not as ruptures, but as part of a larger, consistent developmental vision.
Visual Representations and Affective Legitimation
The visual analysis provides further evidence of how media discourse constructs legitimacy not only through language but also through strategically curated imagery. Over the 2-decade period examined, Chinese media representations of new energy have shifted from abstract and indirect imagery—such as landscapes or technological exhibitions—to increasingly affective and symbolic portrayals of wind and solar infrastructure. This visual consolidation parallels the increasing lexical salience of these technologies, reinforcing their status as dominant symbols of China’s energy future.
These later-phase visuals are dominated by vibrant colors, glowing sunlight, clear skies, and human actors engaged in energy work. Such stylistic and compositional features do not simply illustrate energy developments but actively participate in the emotional framing of energy as modern, hopeful, and virtuous.
This evolution in visual discourse aligns with what Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) refer to as the move from informational to promotional discourse in late modernity, where images are not just representations but instruments of persuasion. Warm-toned visuals of wind farms at sunrise, or workers installing solar panels under bright skies, evoke a sensory experience of optimism and vitality. These affective cues operate as part of what Anderson (2014) calls “affective atmospheres,” contributing to an emotional climate that normalizes and celebrates the low-carbon transition.
The predominance of wind and solar imagery—despite textual references to a broader range of technologies such as methanol, shale gas, or nuclear—also reveals a semiotic strategy of visual simplification. As Hall (1997) suggests, representation works through selection and exclusion, and what is rendered visible shapes the boundaries of public meaning. Wind turbines and solar panels are widely recognizable symbols of clean energy and lend themselves easily to visually appealing compositions. Their ubiquity in news photography thus reinforces a coherent, emotionally resonant identity for China’s energy future—even when actual policy includes less visible or more controversial technologies.
Furthermore, the integration of human figures—such as engineers, laborers, or citizens—within these scenes anchors the energy transition in narratives of national effort, social participation, and technological empowerment. This supports Bednarek and Caple’s (2012) argument that news images construct news values such as positivity, proximity, and personalization, which are essential to sustaining audience engagement. In this case, visual representations not only highlight infrastructure but also embody the human and moral dimensions of energy transformation.
These findings suggest that affective legitimation is an essential dimension of China’s discursive energy governance. While institutional policy documents emphasize performance metrics and targets, media visuals serve a complementary role in generating emotional alignment, fostering public trust, and symbolizing progress. This aligns with the concept of “visual governance” (Mitchell, 2014), in which political legitimacy is increasingly negotiated through image-based narratives that appeal to both rational judgment and affective resonance.
In sum, the visual discourse of new energy in Chinese media performs more than a supportive role—it actively constitutes a culturally and emotionally legible vision of legitimacy. By framing renewable energy development as not only necessary but also aesthetically compelling and socially uplifting, media visuals help shape public perceptions of what a desirable and legitimate energy future looks like. Visual discourse thus functions as an active component of governance, shaping how desirable futures are imagined and normalized.
Media Discourse as a Tool of Soft Governance
The empirical findings across linguistic and visual dimensions demonstrate that Chinese media discourse has functioned not merely as a communication platform, but as a strategic instrument of soft governance—a governance mode that relies on persuasion, narrative management, and symbolic alignment rather than coercion or regulatory force. Through the stabilization of energy-related terminologies (e.g., “clean energy,”“green energy”), the affective framing of visual content, and the strategic naming of actors across phases, media have actively contributed to legitimizing the evolving roles of the state, local governments, enterprises, and international partners in China’s energy transition.
This aligns with broader conceptualizations of discursive governance, whereby legitimacy is sustained through the construction of coherent, culturally resonant, and future-oriented public narratives (Hajer, 1997; Schmidt, 2008). In particular, the ability of media discourse to adapt to different governance paradigms—technocratic in the early 2000s, decentralized during local expansion, entrepreneurial during market innovation, and statist in the carbon-neutrality phase—shows how media act as a discursive bridge between shifting institutional logics and public perception. This flexibility is a hallmark of soft governance strategies in complex policy environments such as climate and energy transitions (Radtke, 2025).
Furthermore, the repeated alignment of media discourse with national strategies such as the 5-Year Plans, the Belt and Road Initiative, and global climate goals reinforces the media’s role in promoting governance coherence—a key requirement for legitimacy in multilevel environmental governance (Nilsson et al., 2012). The media’s consistent framing of new energy in positive, normative terms—regardless of underlying technological shifts or actor constellations—has helped ensure public receptiveness and ideological continuity despite significant structural transformations in the energy sector.
Importantly, such media-facilitated soft governance does not replace formal institutional arrangements but complements them by shaping cognitive, emotional, and normative frameworks. As Foucault (1991) suggested, governance operates not only through institutions but also through the shaping of knowledge and perception. In this context, Chinese media have served as intermediaries of legitimacy by translating complex policy shifts into culturally intelligible narratives that resonate with national development goals, environmental aspirations, and geopolitical ambitions.
In sum, the Chinese media’s role in energy discourse reflects an evolving model of governance that integrates state authority with discursive flexibility, institutional objectives with symbolic persuasion, and policy instruments with cultural frames. By reinforcing both the rational and affective dimensions of legitimacy, media discourse becomes an indispensable tool in managing the societal dimensions of low-carbon transition.
Notably, the legitimacy patterns identified in our corpus analysis align with evidence from national surveys and experimental studies on public perceptions of renewable energy in China. Empirical research shows that citizens tend to endorse renewable energy expansion when narratives emphasize co-benefits such as cleaner air, energy security, and technological innovation (Liu et al., 2019; Ozcan et al., 2025). Studies also indicate that affective and moral framing—including images of environmental improvement and national achievement—enhances public acceptance of energy and climate policies (D. Chen et al., 2016). The warm-toned, future-oriented visuals and value-laden labels identified in our analysis therefore provide the symbolic environment in which such attitudes are cultivated. This complementarity reinforces the argument that discursive governance and public perception co-evolve, mutually shaping the legitimacy of China’s energy transition. Within this framework, media act as intermediaries that translate policy priorities into culturally resonant narratives of progress and responsibility.
Limitations
This study relies exclusively on English-language reporting from state-affiliated Chinese media outlets, which necessarily shapes the type of discursive patterns that can be observed. As these outlets operate within institutional frameworks aligned with national policy priorities, the discourse analyzed here primarily reflects official and policy-consistent narratives rather than contested, oppositional, or alternative viewpoints.
Consequently, the findings should be interpreted as capturing how legitimacy is constructed and stabilized within an institutionalized, public-facing communicative space, rather than as a comprehensive account of all societal debates surrounding China’s energy transition. This focus is consistent with the study’s aim of examining discursive legitimation as a governance mechanism, but it also means that alternative framings present in other media spheres fall outside the scope of the analysis.
This study does not aim to infer public opinion or audience reception. Rather, it examines how legitimacy is discursively constructed and stabilized within public-facing, state-affiliated media narratives. As such, the findings should be understood as illuminating the symbolic and communicative conditions under which energy transition policies are made publicly intelligible and normatively acceptable, rather than as direct evidence of societal endorsement.
Focusing on state-run English-language media necessarily foregrounds policy-aligned discursive patterns and may underrepresent alternative or critical voices present in domestic-language or commercial media. However, this institutional positioning is analytically central to the present study, as it allows us to examine how legitimacy is articulated within authoritative communication channels that play a key role in shaping official narratives of governance and development. Future research could extend this analysis by comparing these public-facing discourses with domestic media or audience-centered data to further explore reception dynamics.
Conclusion
This study has examined how the legitimacy of new energy development in China has been discursively constructed over the past 2 decades through keywords, nomination strategies, and visual framing in English-language mainstream media. Identifying four phases—from state-led experimentation to local wind expansion, diversified innovation, and centralized carbon-neutral coordination—it shows how media discourse adapts to and reinforces shifting governance paradigms.
Theoretically, the study demonstrates that legitimacy in energy transition is not only institutionally enacted but also discursively performed. Normative labels, affective visuals, and symbolic actor naming together sustain public trust and policy alignment, extending the notion of soft governance through narrative and affect rather than regulation alone.
Methodologically, it advances a corpus-assisted, multimodal framework that integrates textual and visual analysis to trace long-term governance change, bridging policy analysis, and media discourse research. Practically, the findings highlight the role of media in shaping public imaginaries and normalizing low-carbon policies, offering insights for more culturally resonant communication in both domestic and international contexts.
Overall, the study elucidates how discourse, governance, and legitimacy are intertwined in China’s energy transition, providing tools for future research on sustainability across diverse contexts.
Supplemental Material
sj-doc-1-sgo-10.1177_21582440261425132 – Supplemental material for Legitimizing Energy Transition in China: Governance Shifts and Media Representations Across Two Decades
Supplemental material, sj-doc-1-sgo-10.1177_21582440261425132 for Legitimizing Energy Transition in China: Governance Shifts and Media Representations Across Two Decades by Renping Liu and Cheng Chen in SAGE Open
Supplemental Material
sj-doc-2-sgo-10.1177_21582440261425132 – Supplemental material for Legitimizing Energy Transition in China: Governance Shifts and Media Representations Across Two Decades
Supplemental material, sj-doc-2-sgo-10.1177_21582440261425132 for Legitimizing Energy Transition in China: Governance Shifts and Media Representations Across Two Decades by Renping Liu and Cheng Chen in SAGE Open
Footnotes
Ethical Considerations
This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
Consent to Participate
This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
Author Contributions
Renping Liu contributed to Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, and Writing – Original Draft Preparation. Cheng Chen contributed to Resources, Formal Analysis, Software, Writing – Review & Editing, and Funding Acquisition.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.*
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
References
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