Electronic Sports Communication in China: The Change of Media Framing and the Reconstruction of Social Cognition

Electronic sports (e-sports) has entered China and developed through several stages. The rise and development of new things often face complex social contexts and obstacles to gain social acceptance, with the mass media playing a vital role in it. The localization of China's e-sports communication is focused on. It examines the changing process of how the social mainstream perceives e-sports from the perspective of media construction and meaning production. Based on the theories and methodologies of media frame analysis, how the mass media constructs e-sports issues diachronically and how e-sports, which has already enjoyed information cognitive resources, can reshape the public's consensus are analyzed. The research finds that the localized e-sports communication has undergone different stages, including "games as instruments for leisure and entertainment, harmfulness of games, defending for being a kind of competitive sports, justifying as e-sport and post-rational reflections". Through those stages, e-sports communication has mobilized the social cognitive resources to make justifications for itself and accepted by the social mainstream in the end.