AN INVESTIGATIVE STUDY ON SOURCES OF INFORMATION ABOUT CHINA IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

This research has been conducted to identify the strategies used by People’s Republic of China to spread the soft diplomacy to the Sri Lankan audience. Hence the study has mainly focused to indicated the sources that the Sri Lankans are getting information from China and the perception creation about China among the Sri Lankans through the strategies they have used. This is a qualitative study and the data has been collected through the semi structured method with the purposive sampling. 20 interviews have been conducted with the people belongs to different categories. The results have been analyzed through the thematic analysis. Thus, the results indicated that, there are five main sources spread the information about China. China as a state used their international media in order to spread their information to Sri Lanka. Thus, CRI Sinhala service, Chinese social media influencers, local media reporting, real life experiences of the people and import / export business people are the sources of the information about China in Sri Lanka. Hence the CRI Sinhala service is more focusing on the Chinese culture. Social media influencers are spreading the news about the Chinese culture, real life, China’s technology and China’s relationship with Sri Lanka mainly. Further, local media reporting about China’s projects in Sri Lanka. Thus, the real-life experiences and the import/export business people share the China’s daily life style. The positive influence about China made by the China’s media and the real-life experiences of Sri Lankans in China while the local media reporting specially the private channels give the negative feeling about China and the import/export businessmen give medium impression about China.