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This study examined a cross-cultural perspective on how the top popular press in the Philippines and China portray an evaluative stance as regards the current South China Sea tensions. It set out to reveal the news writers' positions through examining Martin and White's (2005) appraisal framework particularly the attitude category. The analysis of the media reports from the two countries culled from a three-year period (January 2013-December 2016) focused on how the news writers construed their attitudinal judgment and positions. Findings reveal that the high occurrences of appreciation resources in both corpora provide subtle or indirect expressions of behavioral judgment in the course of journalistic writing where conventions relating to objectivity are necessary. Even if dominated by appreciation evaluative language that construes value of phenomenon relating to aspects of the disputes, affect (manifesting emotions) and judgment (relating to behavior) evaluative resources are employed to reflect or represent the socio-cultural and political contexts, government policy and even capture the local sentiment in which the news reports are written. As regards the difference between the two, the Chinese news reports lean towards a more diplomatic stance through the noteworthy use of evaluative affect and appreciation resources that underscore enhancement of relationship, partnership and accord while the Philippine news reports are more inclined to express implied negative subjective attitudinal stance on the issue. This paper set out the significance of language in framing positions, sentiments, opinions and policies in which meanings are construed in news reports. Examining media discourse from the lens of the appraisal system or evaluative language underscores how subjectivity occurs where beliefs, notions and values in a society are generated.

Using Indonesia as a case study, this article aims to contribute to the existing literature on why weaker states engage in hedging by examining how Indonesia’s domestic factors influence its foreign policy decisions regarding the United States and China. The article argues that domestic and foreign policies are interconnected as domestic agendas, including the interests and aspirations of Indonesian politicians as well as public opinion, have led to variations in the country’s hedging behaviours towards the two great powers. On one hand, domestic political and economic considerations drive Indonesia to engage with the United States and China. On the other hand, the same factors can also act as hindrances that limit Indonesia’s engagement with these powers. Consequently, despite having strong defence ties with the United States, Indonesia now sees China as a major and essential economic partner that helps the country and its leaders achieve their development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does economic interdependence generate and foster positive attitudes among people? Few studies in the existing literature deal directly with this question. To fill this gap, this paper examines the economic relationships among China, Japan and South Koreaandthe resulting public opinions. We find that economic interdependence in Northeast Asiahas negatively influenced public opinion and hence increased tension and conflict among these states. Then, we draw some important political and theoretical implications from our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the engagement of domestic actors in public conversation surrounding free trade negotiations with a focus on the framing of these negotiations as economic, strategic or domestic issues. To analyse this topic, this article utilises the use of Twitter as a barometer of public sentiment toward the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). We employ topic classification and sentiment analysis to understand how RCEP is discussed in 345,015 tweets. Our findings show that the overall sentiment score towards RCEP is neutral. However, we find that when RCEP is discussed as a strategic issue, the sentiment is slightly more negative than when discussed as a domestic or economic issue. This article further suggests that discussion of RCEP is driven by the fear of China's geopolitical ambitions, domestic protectionist agendas, and impact of RCEP on the domestic economy. This article contributes to the growing use of big data in understanding trade negotiations. Furthermore, it contributes to the study of free trade negotiation by examining how domestic political actors frame free trade negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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