Imagining China in online reviews: A discourse analysis of Amazon consumer reviews on China-related books

Research on the image of China that emerges from Amazon online reviews is wanting. Scholarship here can greatly benefit from leveraging the potential of quantitative analysis. The present study addresses this gap by drawing on an integrated framework of discourse analysis and a combined approach of distant and close reading to examine the image of China constructed by the discourse of Amazon consumer reviews on the most popular China-related books. By examining the metadata of 43 China-related books and a corpus consisting of 48,895 online consumer reviews on these books, this study seeks to reveal the major topics conveyed, associated stances and attitudes, and the values, assumptions, and perceptions shaping the discourse. As such, the study provides insight into future research on world perceptions of China through global digital media in terms of research content, theoretical frameworks, and research methods.