INFLATED TONES OF MEDIA AND THE OUTCOMES OF SINO-SINGAPORE TIANJIN ECO-CITY

Abstract

Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City is a flagship cooperation project between Singapore and China. In September 2008, Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city officially started construction, and it has been built for ten years by 2019. During its ten years of construction, the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city has been attracting worldwide attention, more and more media are involved in the promotion of it.

This report is aim to study the inflated tones of media and its outcomes of Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city. This report uses Python's web crawler technology to collect all relevant news about Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city on the internet, up to 8797 pieces of news. And it is easy to see the various titles of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City in these news reports, such as the “Demonstration City”, “Ecological City Leader”, “A New Model of Urban Construction”, “Global Green City”, “Future City” and so on. It can be said that all aspects of Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city have been highly evaluated and affirmed by the society, and it is actively setting up a successful model of new-type city development, and the eco-city is prospering.

However, the field study revealed that there is a big gap between the reality and the inflated media tones, and Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city seems to be exaggerated. With tens of billions of dollars of investment, the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city still has a lot of low-quality constructions, it is easily to see cracked roads, dry greenery and peeling walls, all of which have created a huge gap with the headlines of "high-quality development of Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city” in some news. The National Animation Industry Park, which has been touted by major media, has now gone to the ground. In reality, the waste classification, medical care, education, transportation, and population of the eco-city have not reached the level of media advocacy.

In conclusion, exaggerating facts or one-sided reports are manifestations of lack of media literacy. Media should not blindly reproduce news for the purpose of sensational, but should verify facts with multiple sources before reporting. In addition, merely relying on the media's beautiful "package" can't really enhance the value of the city, only to really enhance the city's hard power to achieve the long-term development of the city.