The Promoting Effect of Mass Media on Participatory Landscape Revitalization—An Analysis from Newspaper Coverages of Participatory Urban Gardening in China

Abstract

Urban renewal urgently needs to find a new media tool to extensively promote public participation. Professionals also need strong and powerful communication tools for the public. Mass media has the ability to influence human perceptions and behaviors, but its role has been overlooked. This study aims to arouse professionals’ attention to mass media and promote interdisciplinary cooperation through empirical evidence. By observing the performance of participatory urban gardening projects in Chinese newspapers, we highlight the positive effect of mass media on participatory landscape revitalization. We selected two projects in China as samples, collected newspaper reports on them during 2017–2021, and analyzed the textual framing and report communication based on communication theory. According to the result, mass media has four positive effects that not only affect the public but also contribute to participatory landscape revitalization development. Based on the results, we discuss the consistence of views of the mass media and landscape architecture. This study suggests that landscape architecture needs to actively collaborate with public media to better leverage the role of landscape in sustainable urban transformation.

1. Introduction

Complex and diverse cities can be dynamic engines of global economic and social development [1]. Urban renewal is an important means to achieve sustainable urban transformation through underutilized and degraded sections of an inner city [2,3]. As China’s urbanization has entered the stock development stage [4,5], urban renewal has risen to the level of a national strategy [6]. The exclusivity of the process has been considered as a root cause of the “lock-in” to environmentally unsustainable and unjust urban approaches [1,7]. As a result, inclusive and participatory approaches are increasingly being adopted in urban renewal. Citizen participation is regarded as the bedrock for good urban renewal practice [8]. However, public participation in current urban renewal initiatives remains poor. Citizens’ awareness of participation is low, accompanied by a general lack of background knowledge [9]. The degree of participation is mainly superficial and lacks depth [10]. Some urban renewal actions fail to form social consensus due to the neglect of citizen participation and information disclosure, which in turn leads to public dissatisfaction and even resistance [11,12].

Therefore, how can we promote public participation? The process of engaging people may be more important than the specific planning strategies themselves [13]. Empirical studies have confirmed that tools providing information to the public have a significant positive effect on promoting participation [14]. For example, technology knowledge education [15], informing relevance to life [16], design representations [17], public brochures, and meetings [13] can make participation effective and efficient. However, previous small-scale community interactions are already not enough to handle the large-scale problems metropolitans are facing [18], and hence a new communication tool with a larger public vision should be found.

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a classical and well-supported theoretical framework for predicting and analyzing human behavior in social psychology [19,20] and has been used to explain public participation in studies related to urban renewal [21,22]. According to this theory, a favorable attitude and a supportive subjective norm provide the motivation to engage in a behavior [23]. Thus, for this research, this theory can explain the practical experience and provide a logical framework to identify directions for finding ways to promote public participation. Mass media covers non-personal channels and organizations of one-way communication to the general public, and it includes radio, newspapers, television, Internet, etc. In other fields, empirical studies have emerged on the significant effects of content published by mass media on human attitudes and subjective norms [24]. Statistical studies have validated mass media’s positive effect on championing physical activity [25,26], child abuse prevention [27], support for alcohol policy [28], and use of seat belts [29], among others. Thus, we theoretically assumed that mass media could play a positive role in public participation and become a tool to promote participatory urban renewal. However, when we reviewed the current urban renewal toolkit [30,31], we found that although media publicity was included, mass media was not.

With the promotion of inclusive design, designers and planners are repositioning their roles [32]. On the one hand, research has shown that actors perceived as neutral have a greater capacity to lead social innovation initiatives and foster collaboration [33]. In China, many cities, including Beijing [34] and Shanghai [35], have established responsible planner systems in recent years, hoping that planners can play a role as a bridge to promote public participation [36]. On the other hand, it has been noted that while public participation is gaining importance, planners should also take steps to shape the discourse to ensure the quality of the renewal results [37,38]. Mass media has significant ability to propagate and shape the discourse [39,40]. The ability to use this communication tool will allow planners and designers to do their jobs better. In fact, the tradition of using media has always existed. Frederick Law Olmsted used public media platforms to advance the causes he supported with his remarkable power of persuasive writing and speaking. Ian Lennox McHarg hosted the television show, The House We Live In, in the early 1960s. Today, however, despite the emergence of calls to value the power of journalism and media [41,42,43], people have not exhibited sufficient attention [44].

The participatory community micro-transformation approaches are a novel path toward new styles of urbanization [8], becoming the current trend in China [45]. Among them, landscape revitalization has become an important vehicle for public participation in community affairs [46]. Residents not only propose and discuss landscape revitalization planning, but also directly invest their own resources to build and maintain the landscape [14]. Participatory urban gardening [47] is currently an effective tool for community landscape revitalization and has been formally promoted in many cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. These gardens, similar to community gardens in developed countries, are considered to supply food, build social networks, and enhance public participation [48,49], while continuing the Chinese tradition of living [50,51].

Our observations and practical work experience show us a considerable amount of coverage of participatory urban gardening projects in Chinese mass media. Surprisingly, people who had seen the news coverage also contacted the designer to express their desire to participate and invited the designers to lead their local community garden construction.

This phenomenon seemingly confirms our theoretical assumption, but we still do not know exactly how these reports attract public attention to participatory urban gardening. This may be why professionals are not fully aware of the power of mass media. Therefore, in this paper, we hope to discover what promoting effects mass media has on urban renewal by looking at how they portray and communicate about participatory urban gardening. We selected Chinese newspaper reports related to two gardens in the past five years as empirical subjects. The textual content and dissemination of the reports were thoroughly examined with the help of communication theory.

The remainder of the article include three sections. Section 2 describes the research methodology, including the context and material, the theoretical framework, the data collection procedure, and the variable measurements. Section 3 elaborates four promoting effects based on the results of the quantitative analysis of textual content and communication. The final section discusses the role of landscape architecture in urban transformation conveyed by the media’s attention and action and suggests directions for future research.

2. Methodology

2.1. Research Context and Material

The study selected coverage published by newspapers (Figure 1) as the research material. That does not imply that we believe it to be the most powerful form of mass communication, especially in the current digital web era. However, newspapers continue to be the most prevalent form and the primary source of news [52]. Newspapers as an original mass media are relatively unified, which guarantees the consistency of the analysis. Besides, as an officially published medium with an impersonal and institutional nature [53], a newspaper has more reliable sources of information than irregular Internet content, while texts written by professional journalists have a stronger propaganda and persuasive power [54]. Consequently, they are good proxies for mass media in general.

How did we select the coverage? In the Chinese context, there are various terms for participatory urban gardening projects, including “community garden”, “neighborhood garden”, “co-construction garden”, “green garden,” and so on. In public news, reporters often use the project name of these gardens directly rather than the typology name, leading to an absence of uniform keywords. Additionally, “garden” is also commonly used in Chinese to describe the public green space built by land developers in residential areas. This situation further increased the uncertainty of report retrieval. Using the project name for retrieval ensures the completeness and precision of the original story collection. Furthermore, from the perspective of landscape practice, participatory landscape revitalization in China is still in the form of a project system. We believe that projects that maintain continuous development and media exposure can better observe the influence of the media. To sum up, we finally decided to use the news coverage of specific projects as the research material.

Beijing and Shanghai are pioneering cities of participatory urban gardening in China and have by far the largest number of gardens compared to any other city [48]. Meanwhile, their journalism industries are the most developed in China, with high professional standards. Through a literature search and screening of all publicly available projects from both cities (see Appendix A), we selected the items with the longest duration and most frequent media exposure from each of the two cities for a more detailed review of media activity. The two cases (Figure 2) have similar achievements and qualities from a professional perspective. Both cases are internationally known and have been selected for the Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture’s excellent case list. The leaders of both projects are practitioners and researchers in landscape micro-renewal with significant achievements in China, and both cases have emphasized the importance of public participation in their official statements.

For the presentation of specific cases, the Micro-Garden Series (micro-garden) of Shijia Hutong is located in the high-density old city area of Beijing. A student team led by Professor Xiaolei Hou from the Central Academy of Fine Arts’ School of Architecture has been working on this lengthy project since 2015, and their efforts have been recognized with the Award of Excellence at the 2020 IFLA AAPME Awards1. The Knowledge and Innovation Community Garden (KIC Garden) is the first community garden in the open neighborhood of Shanghai, which was transformed from a piece of wasteland sited in the middle of multiple residential compounds. Started in 2016 as an experimental urban initiative, the KIC Garden is run by “Clover,” a civil society organization led by Yuelai Liu, a faculty member in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Tongji University’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and two registered architects. As part of the Shanghai Community Garden series, the KIC Garden has been continuously selected for the Shanghai Manual2.

2.2. Research Variables

Since our analysis is of newspaper reports rather than the gardens themselves, we drew on the research paradigms of news communication to determine variables that could describe the portrayal and communication process. Based on the purpose of the study and the extracted data, the research variables were selected as shown in Figure 3. See

Table 1. Variables’ definition/description.

Variable	Definition/Description
Newspaper	The newspaper that published the news.
Journalist	The people who narrated and constructed the news story [55].
Report Theme	The summary of news content or property of the meaning, insinuating journalists’ views and attitudes toward an issue [56].
News Sources	The sources from which the content described in the article was obtained. Different sources will narrate or evaluate news facts from different angles.
Presentation Modes	The types of news stories, including straight news, features, editorial, interview, and so on. Presentation modes of coverages can be divided according to communicative intention or purpose, with some presenting news and others presenting opinions or entertainment [57].
Picture Theme	The summary or concept of the news picture.
High-Frequency Words	The most commonly used words in sample text. It reflects how journalists output news values through frequent repetition [58] when constructing news texts.
Republication	The platform that republished the news.

for the definition or description.

There are two research paradigms that we drew on. The communication paradigm we chose is Laswell’s model. The essence of news communication is to reveal the latest factual information to the public and influence them [59]. Harold Dwight Lasswell [60] was the first to divide the communication act into five components. This classical model effectively describes communication and regulates communication research while still fitting the news communication today [61].

To describe the portrayal, we chose frame theory, which was introduced into news communication research by Goffman [62]. The theory provides a powerful tool to describe the content of media coverage [63]. Furthermore, framing studies have demonstrated the impact of news frames formed by communicators’ construction of social reality through subjective cognition [64] on public attitudes, perceptions, and levels of behavior [65]. For newspaper, the content analysis of news text is at the core of frame analysis and can be used to represent the presence of the frame [63]. At present, the theory of “Three-Level Structure of News Media Framework” of Zang Guoren can be regarded as the “mainstream” method for mainland Chinese researchers to analyze news text frames [66].

In the subsequent analysis, theoretical and empirical findings from the media and communication fields also helped us to understand the observed reality [67] and guided us to confirm and evaluate descriptive measurements.

2.3. Data Extraction and Analysis

We searched the archive of “Founder Contemporary Newspapers” by using Chinese set terms, including the names of projects and cities. To date, this archive contains electronic versions of 482 Chinese newspapers with complete data of pages, images, and text. Considering the limited archive index, we conducted additional sampling through the search engine Baidu. After eliminating unrelated coverages, the final sample of newspaper coverages totaled 43, including 27 for the Shanghai project and 16 for the Beijing project. These coverages were published from 6 January 2017 to 13 December 2021. Then, we collected page files in color (pdf or jpg) and text files (txt) of these 43 reports from the “Founder Contemporary Newspapers” newspaper e-version website and the National Library of China. Next, we obtained and recorded 319 valid republications through the search engines Baidu and Search after eliminating the malicious or illegal ones.

To handle multiple types of data more easily, the study used MAXQDA 2020 for qualitative data coding and analysis. The fields used for the initial verbatim coding included the name of the newspaper, the page, the date of publication, the name of the journalist, and the name of the republished media. After that, we categorized the codes through deductive coding. For example, journalists were classified according to their positions, while republished media were classified according to their type. For the news frame analysis, we used similar approaches to analyze the story genre, topic, news images, and information sources.

The analysis of the textual discourse was completed by the Chinese semantic analysis tool: NLPIR-Parser [68], to quantify the frequency and emotional tendency. Before the analysis, Chinese word separation was performed using NLPIR-Parser. To ensure the accuracy of word separation, the study performed new word recognition additionally for sample text using NLPIR-Parser. Based on the recognition results, we edited and annotated the word separation dictionary based on landscape architecture knowledge, which significantly improved the accuracy of the separation results. Finally, the output results of word frequency were manually filtered to eliminate unrelated words and sum up synonymous words. The emotional tendency was analyzed using the sentiment analysis tool under the NLPIR-Parser information extraction toolset. The results are presented in the form of emotion scores, including the total emotion score, positive score, and negative score. Finally, we calculated the emotional polarity score [69] of each report. The higher the emotional polarity score, the more positive the tendency.

3. Results

Based on the results of the quantitative analysis, we attempted to crystallize the promoting effect of mass media on participatory landscape revitalization. We present four promoting effects: reducing the cost of information acquisition for the public, increasing the public’s perceived knowledge and sense of efficacy, empowering participants, and providing access to know public attitudes. These four promoting effects not only affect the public, but also contribute to participatory landscape revitalization by influencing other participants.

3.1. Media Exposure Reduces Information Acquisition Cost for the Public

Receiving information is the first step towards awareness. Communication through mass media can reduce the information cost for the public to access participatory landscapes. This is reflected in three main aspects: the newspaper’s audience size, credibility, and the ability of repeated exposure.

First, the mass media, as a part of the knowledge-extending institutions [70], has created information channels for the public beyond geographical space [71], allowing these gardens, which are extremely limited in size and participation in the megalopolis, to be known by millions of readers. Statistics indicate that participatory urban gardening projects were captured and published by newspapers at all levels, whereby 67.44% of the coverages came from provincial newspapers. With a circulation of over a million in Shanghai and Beijing (see Appendix B), two of China’s most important provincial municipalities, these provincial newspapers are the main outlets for covering city news. National newspapers reported 23.26% of the time, in which the project was spread nationwide as a “model” and “template”.

Although newspapers and other traditional media are still the primary sources of internet news, online media is quickly becoming a key part of the media systems in most nations [72]. On the Internet, news republication and aggregation [73] has further expanded the audience size of the newspaper.

Table 2. Republication of sample coverages.

Type of Republishing Platform	Frequency of Republication	Proportion (%)
Institutional Social Media	105	32.92
(a) Original Newspaper	30
(b) National News Website	20
(c) Provincial News Web (At the project location)	14
(d) Government	14
(e) Online News Aggregator	6
(f) Provincial Newspaper (Not at the project location)	6
(g) Provincial News Website (Not at the project location)	5
(h) Industry Web Portal	4
(i) University and College	3
(j) Journal	2
(k) Political Party	1
Industry Web Portal	44	13.79
(a) Social Development	16
(b) Economy	8
(c) Tourism	5
(d) Planning and Design	4
(e) Property Development	3
(f) Social Welfare	2
(g) Academic Research	2
(h) Agriculture	1
(i) Energy	1
(j) Environment Protection	1
(k) Art	1
Provincial News Website (At the project location)	35	10.97
Online News Aggregator	33	10.34
Mobile pages and APPs of Online News Aggregator	33	10.34
National News Website	28	8.78
Provincial News Website (Not at the project location)	15	4.70
Government Website	12	3.76
Individual Social Media	7	2.19
Journal	2	0.63
Design Company Website	2	0.63
University Website	1	0.31
Local Newspaper	1	0.31
Popular Science Website	1	0.31
Total	319	100.00

presents the distribution of republications on different types of platforms. What warrants particular attention is that over 55% of the statistics on republication records come from social media and news aggregation service providers, including their websites and apps. The two platform types are the absolute core channels of news communication in today’s China [74].

Second, distinguishing information authenticity will undoubtedly increase the cost for the public to obtain accurate information. In the Chinese context, mass media still maintains a higher credibility than other forms of media [75,76,77]. For example, the coded national newspapers, the People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency, the most important official newspapers in China, are considered the “wind vane” for understanding China’s development. In addition, journalists choose, write, edit, and position information presented as news to the public by serving as gatekeepers [78]. Bylines of senior reporters can add further credibility to the news story. Chief reporters are in charge of the reporting team, news beat management, and producing special coverage, requiring experience and expertise. The chief reporters produced 27.9% of the sample coverages. According to Figure 4, these coverages had a more dominant page order, and some even ran on the front pages.

Psychological studies have well-established the exposure effect, which refers to the fact that people evaluate a stimulus more positively after repeated exposure to it [79,80]. Repeated coverage in the mass media allows the public to be passively and repeatedly exposed to participatory landscape renewal without the additional cost of finding. Based on our observations, newspapers in Beijing and Shanghai have shown continued interest in participatory urban gardening. In total, 7 of the 13 newspapers and 10 of the 41 journalists produced more than 1 coverage. These ongoing participatory urban gardening projects provide a constant flow of dynamic material for these journalists. Besides, journalists adopted them as examples when writing about related issues (e.g., urban governance and construction, child-friendliness, ecology).

3.2. Constructive Journalism Can Enhance the Public’s Perceived Knowledge and Sense of Efficacy

News coverages are the consequence of media recontextualization [81]. Not only do these convey news facts, but they also influence readers’ perceptions of issues through metaphorical news discourse of various practices and ideologies [82,83]. Constructive journalism is a journalistic method that typically infuses a news story with positive or solution-oriented information to make the audience feel more positive and engaged [84,85,86]. Generally, effective journalism should focus on six things: solutions, be future-oriented, public empowerment, co-creation with the public, inclusivity and diversity, and preservation of the media’s fundamental purpose [87,88]. Empirical studies have shown that constructive news can also have a positive effect on audience emotions, attitudes, and actions in the Chinese context [80,89].

The results presented below show exactly how journalists do this when reporting on participatory urban gardens. By producing such constructive news, the mass media can guide the public to realize that participatory landscape revitalization is a solution to urban problems and form a positive attitude and a tendency to participate.

Journalists prefer to choose genres that have an in-depth portrayal writing approach and convey opinions and attitudes. As shown in

Table 3. Presentation mode types in sample coverages.

	Total		KIC Garden		Micro-Garden
Presentation Mode	Quantity	Proportion (%)	Quantity	Proportion (%)	Quantity	Proportion (%)
Straight News	5	10.4	1	3.2	4	23.5
Photo Caption	2	4.2	0	0	2	11.8
Feature Story	31	64.6	21	67.7	10	58.8
Interview	6	12.5	6	19.4	0	0
Comment	4	8.3	3	9.7	1	5.9
Total	48	100.00	31	100.0	17	100.0

, “feature story” and “interview” are the most dominant genres in the sample coverages, accounting for nearly 80% of the sample. Unlike straight news and captions based on objective descriptions of news facts, the media explained and disseminated ideas about the connotations and impacts of participatory urban gardening through in-depth narratives.

The results show that the media portrayal was not limited to merely conveying the dynamics of the event but tried to arouse readers’ value identification. In the inductive classification of coverages, we summarized eight themes in

Table 4. Theme of sample coverages.

	Total		KIC Garden		Micro-Garden
Theme	Quantity	Proportion (%)	Quantity	Proportion (%)	Quantity	Proportion (%)
Performance of Project	19	42.2	13	44.8	6	37.5
Discussion of Related Topics	10	22.2	10	34.5	0	0.0
Project Introduction	7	15.6	4	13.8	3	18.8
Project News	7	15.6	1	3.4	6	37.5
Designer Profile	2	4.4	1	3.4	1	6.3
Total	45	100.00	29	100.00	31	100.00

, including performance of projects, discussion of related topics, project introduction, project news, and designer profile. A total of 42.2% of coverages focused on the performance to demonstrate the benefits of participatory urban gardening to social and natural systems. Discussions on related topics accounted for 22.2% of the coverages, including urban development, social governance, and child-friendliness, among others. Coverages on project introduction and news accounted for 15.6%, which informed the public about what specifically was being done in the projects. Finally, one coverage of each project featured the chief designer, as typical figures, providing background about them as individuals and the challenges faced in promoting participatory urban gardening.

According to our analysis in Section 3.1, participatory urban gardening is an object that the mass media is willing to report on. The emotional distribution of the sample coverages is shown in the Figure 5. We observed that every journalist exhibits an optimistic outlook when producing news. Combining the aforementioned observations on news genres and themes, we may conclude that the bulk of the recent news on participatory urban gardening is positive.

The statistical results of word frequency and picture theme further indicate that these solution-based reports produced by professional journalists are quite comprehensive and accurate in describing the gardens, including the apparent characteristics and intrinsic value of participatory urban gardening. Readers are significantly more likely to gain more knowledge about participatory urban gardening [90]. Citizens’ participatory actions in two projects were repeatedly reaffirmed in both text and images, including garden design, construction, and management. This will help to convince readers that they can contribute to the solution in news and promote deeper engagement in participatory urban gardening.

The study counted the word frequencies of the sample texts in terms of nouns, verbs, and descriptive words, and selected the top 50, respectively. As

Table 5. Word frequency of nouns.

Nouns
	KIC Garden			Micro-Garden
No.	Chinese	English	Frequency	Chinese	English	Frequency
1	社区	Community	367	微花园	Micro-garden	179
2	居民	Resident	335	胡同	Hutong	175
3	人, 人们	People	269	院, 院子, 小院, 院落	Courtyard	103
4	城市	City	242	花园	Garden	93
5	上海	Shanghai	189	社区	Community	79
6	空间	Space	184	生活	Life	71
7	创智农园, 农园	KIC Garden	182	空间	Space	69
8	孩子, 儿童	Children	175	侯晓蕾	Xiaolei Hou	65
9	小区	Residential district	161	史家胡同	Shijia Hutong	52
10	刘悦来	Yuelai Liu	160	花	Flower	51
11	社区花园	Community garden	153	环境	Environment	48
12	自然	Nature	132	景观	Landscape, scenery	46
13	植物	Plant	129	人, 人们	People	44
14	花园	Garden	107	活动	Activity	43
15	街道, 邻里	Neighborhood	105	艺术	Art	41
16	活动	Activity	98	植物	Plant	40
17	项目, 计划	Project	98	花坛, 花池（子）	Planting bed	38
18	四叶草堂	Clover	75	中央美术学院, 央美, 中央美院, 美院	Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA)	38
19	团队	Team	75	家	Home	38
20	生态	Ecology	68	项目	Project	33
21	社会	Society	66	邻里, 街坊, 邻居	Neighborhood	31
22	微更新	Micro-regeneration	65	旧物	Junk	28
23	生活	Life	59	朝阳门街道	Chaoyangmen subdistrict	27
24	景观	Landscape, scenery	56	北京	Beijing	26
25	环境	Environment	56	美学	Aesthetics	25
26	公园	Park	55	师生	Teacher and student	24
27	绿地	Green space	54	花盆	Flowerpot	23
28	乡土	Native	54	罐, 罐子, 罐罐	Jar	23
29	都市	Metropolis	52	设计师	Designer	22
30	公共空间	Public space	51	葫芦	Gourd	20
31	市民	Citizen	51	许大爷	Uncle Xu	20
32	同济大学, 同济	Tongji University	50	规划师	Planner	19
33	过程, 进程	Process	48	团队	Team	19
34	自治	Self-government	44	文化	Culture	19
35	种子	Seed	43	学生	Student	19
36	老师, 教师	Teacher	43	展览	Exhibition	19
37	文化	Culture	42	方案	Scheme	17
38	专业	Profession	41	杂物	Sundries	17
39	绿色	Green	36	老城, 老城区	Old town	17
40	建筑	Building	36	过程	Process	16
41	行动	Action	36	瓜果	Melon	16
42	周边	Surroundings	35	建筑学院	School of Architecture	16
43	功能	Function	35	盆栽	Potted plant	15
44	门	Door	33	李健	Jian Li	15
45	问题	Problem	32	四合院	Siheyuan	15
46	理念	Idea	31	砖	Brick	15
47	规划师	Planner	31	墙	Wall	14
48	土地	Land	31	柿子树	Persimmon	14
49	花	Flower	30	景观设计, 风景园林	Landscape architecture	14
50	百草园	Hundred-Grass Garden	30	公众	The public	13

shows, the top 10 high-frequency nouns include the name of the project and the designer, indicating that they are repeatedly highlighted in the coverages. In addition, “space” and “community” indicate that the recipients and audiences of participatory urban gardening have been fully introduced. Among the top 50, multiple participants appear in both projects, which indicates that the reports pay sufficient attention to the social forces involved in the projects. In

Table 6. Word frequency of verbs.

Verb
	KIC Garden			Micro-Garden
No.	Chinese	English	Frequency	Chinese	English	Frequency
1	参与	Participate	124	设计	Design	90
2	建设, 营造, 建造	Construct, build	116	改造	Transform	63
3	设计	Design	99	种(植), 栽(植)	Plant	58
4	种, 种植	Plant, cultivate	92	进行, 开展, 实施	Carry out	52
5	玩, 玩耍	Play	77	提升	Improve	50
6	改造	Transform	58	利用, 用	Utilize	44
7	打造, 创造, 造	Create	58	参与, 参加	Participate	43
8	开始	Start, begin	55	摆, 放, 摆放	Put	35
9	需要	Need	55	建设, 建造, 营造	Construct	29
10	变, 变化	Change, transform	52	变成	Change	25
11	发展	Develop	46	喜欢, 爱	Like	23
12	管理	Manage	41	美化	Beautify	20
13	共享, 分享	Share	41	开始, 启动	Start, begin	20
14	互动	Interact	41	养	Raise	19
15	提供	Offer, provide	39	拆除	Dismantle	19
16	更新	Update, regenerate	36	保留, 留	Retain	19
17	维护	Maintain	36	发现	Discover	18
18	生活	Live	34	交流, 沟通	Communicate	17
19	推动, 推进, 推广	Promote	34	维护	Maintain	16
20	住, 居住	Reside	31	介绍	Introduce	15
21	绿化	Green	31	更新	Regenerate	14
22	发现	Find	31	展示, 展出	Show	13
23	看到	Seen	31	生活	Live	12
24	希望	Hope	30	打造	Create	12
25	保护	Protect	30	希望	Hope	12
26	交流	Communicate	29	落地, 落成	Complete	12
27	想	Want	29	整治	Renovate	12
28	服务	Serve	28	灌溉, 浇灌	Water	12
29	带来	Bring	28	举办, 举行	Hold	11
30	位于	Located in	27	帮助	Help	11
31	能够	Can	25	提供	Offer	10
32	实践	Practice	25	再造	Rebuild	10
33	改善, 提高	Improve	24	带动	Stimulate	10
34	利用	Utilize	24	成立, 建立	Establish	10
35	吃	Eat	24	强调	Emphasize	9
36	开放	Open	23	住	Reside	9
37	认为	Think, consider	22	工作	Work	9
38	治理	Govern	22	清理	Clean	9
39	介绍	Introduce	22	形成	Form	9
40	形成	Form	21	报名	Enroll	9
41	创新	Innovate	21	绿化	Green	9
42	工作	Work	21	实践	Practice	9
43	生长, 成长	Grow	20	追求	Pursue	8
44	吸引	Attract	20	产生	Generate	8
45	浇水	Water	20	挂	Hang	8
46	鼓励, 激励	Encourage	20	共建	Co-construct	8
47	实现	Realize, achieve	19	具有	Possess	8
48	发挥, 展现	Show	19	砌	Bricklaying	8
49	合作	Cooperate	17	笑	Smile	8
50	交往	Associate	16	带领	Lead	8

“design”, “transform”, “plant”, “participate,” and “construct” appear as the top 10 high-frequency verbs and introduce the core actions of participatory urban gardening. Among the top 50, both projects used “maintain”, “work”, “communicate”, “water,” and “practice” to present feasible actions for participants, while “regenerate”, “green”, “improve”, “utilize,” and “offer” were used to express the effect of participatory gardening on urban space. Moreover, the coverages frequently used verbs such as “cooperate”, “co-construct,” and “share” to emphasize the collaborative nature, and used verbs including “stimulate”, “show”, “promote”, “encourage,” and “innovate” to demonstrate exemplary performance. In terms of descriptive words (

Table 7. Word frequency of descriptive words.

Descriptive Words
	KIC Garden			Micro-Garden
No.	Chinese	English	Frequency	Chinese	English	Frequency
1	更多, 更加	More	78	小, 微, 小微	Small, little, micro	104
2	小, 微	Small, little, micro	69	老, 旧,	Old	54
3	新	New	57	家门口, 门前, 门口	At the doorstep	39
4	老, 旧, 老旧	Old	45	美, 优美, 美观, 漂亮, 好看	Beautiful	36
5	公共, 公众	Public	42	一起	Together	30
6	慢慢, 逐渐	Gradually	37	共同	Common	25
7	整个	Entire	35	新	New	24
8	不同	Different	31	自发, 主动	Voluntary	23
9	主动, 自发	Voluntary	28	公共, 公众	Public	22
10	重要	Important, significant, virtual	26	原本, 原来	Originally	18
11	美丽	Beautiful	25	绿, 绿色, 绿油油	Green	16
12	原本, 原来	Originally	25	老, 老式	Traditional	12
13	高	High	24	专业	Professional	11
14	日常	Daily	21	杂乱, 杂乱无章	Indigested	11
15	不断	Constantly	21	重要	Important	11
16	真, 真实	Real(ly)	21	重新	Again	10
17	丰富	Abundant	20	参与式	Participative	9
18	一起	Together	20	废弃, 废旧	Obsolete	9
19	难	Hard	19	舒适, 温馨	Comfortable	9
20	绿	Green	18	渐渐, 逐渐	Gradually	8
21	真正	Authentically, indeed	18	身边	Around	8
22	越来越	More and more	18	正式	Officially	7
23	积极	Active(ly)	18	美好	Nice	7
24	共同	Common	17	越来越	More and more	7
25	近	Close	17	独立, 自主	Independently	7
26	美好	Nice	16	实用	Functional	7
27	曾经	Formerly	16	立体	Three-dimensional	6
28	和谐	Harmonious(ly)	15	随意	Optionally	6
29	简单	Simple	15	日常	Daily	6
30	主要	Main, primary	15	丰富, 丰富多彩	Abundant	6
31	直接	Direct	13	专门	Specially	5
32	最终	Final	13	长期, 长久	Long-term	5
33	安全	Safe	13	健康	Healthy	5
34	充分	Sufficient	13	整个	Entire	5
35	少	Seldom	13	精心	Meticulously	5
36	完全	Completely	12	充分	Adequate	5
37	多元, 多样	Multiple	12	热情	Zealous	5
38	自然	Naturally	11	周边	Surrounding	4
39	当然	Certainly	11	进一步	Further	4
40	成功	Successful(ly)	11	曾经	Formerly	4
41	长期	Long-term	10	窗边	Beside the window	4
42	几乎	Nearly	10	自动	Automatic	4
43	可持续	Sustainable	10	其实	Actually	4
44	尤其	Especially	9	独特	Unique	3
45	低	Low	9	可持续	Sustainable	3
46	近年来	In recent years	9	陆续	Successively	3
47	始终	All the time	9	粗壮	Stout	3
48	自由	Free	9	精致	Refined	3
49	精心, 细心, 细致	Meticulously	8	反复	Iterative	3
50	经常	Usually	8	不断	Constantly	3

, “small, little, micro”, “old”, “new”, “voluntary,” and “public” appear in the top 10, which reflect the core characteristics of participatory urban gardening. Among the top 50 high-frequency descriptive words, “beautiful”, “nice”, “abundant,” and “meticulously” convey the environmental quality of the completed garden to the reader. The words “gradually”, “long-term”, “constantly,” and “sustainable” describe the continuous and progressive nature of participatory urban gardening.

News images as visual symbols have the advantage of information communication compared to text, embodying discursive views and ideological messages [91]. After inductive coding, we can note the dominance of three themes in

Table 8. Themes of images in sample coverages.

Image Theme	Total
	Quantity	Proportion (%)
Scenery	16	33.33
Garden volunteer	10	20.83
Garden tour	6	12.50
Exhibition	5	10.42
Children playing	4	8.33
Courses	4	8.33
Character	1	2.08
Diagram	1	2.08
Painting	1	2.08
Total	48	100.00

: scenery, garden construction, and garden tour. They combined to make up nearly 60% of the image category. By showing not only the renovated landscape, but also the sight of ordinary people’s participation and enjoyment, the visualization reflects top-level success factors in solution-based news stories [92]. Other recurring themes include exhibition and courses that represent the interaction between designers and residents, implying the inclusiveness during the design process.

3.3. Empower Participants in Participatory Landscape Revitalization

Truth and accuracy in coverage ensure that newspapers will maintain public trust and high-level function [93], so journalists must look for applicable information channels to prove facts. The selection and usage frequency of sources informs the journalist’s reconstruction of factual news, implying the stance of the journalist or the media organization [94], thus further influencing readers’ perception. Based on our observations of the sample news, news sources include designers, residents, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), property owners, garden managers, community workers, authorities, and policy makers (

Table 9. New sources of coverages.

	Total
Source	Quantity	Proportion（%）
Designer	57	39.31
Resident	38	26.21
Scholar	23	15.86
Community worker	12	8.28
Government	6	4.14
Garden manager	5	3.45
Property owner	3	2.07
NGO	1	0.69
Total	145	100.00

). According to Liu et al. [95], these news sources are all included in the participatory urban gardening partnership system being established. Furthermore, the average number of sources for the sample news stories was 3.37, which specifically aligns with the multi-participant feature of participatory urban gardening. Selecting multiple participants as sources can increase the credibility and persuasiveness of news. For participatory landscape revitalization, such a contribution to news empowers participants with the opportunity to master the microphone, and then, promotes people to value co-creation [87] in participatory landscape revitalization.

The results show that designers were the most popular source of journalists. Designers are able to provide detailed descriptions and explanations of their projects as the “information czar” [96] for journalists. The advantage of high visibility of designers is to enhance the discourse power of professionals in participatory landscape revitalization to make participation effective and efficient, leading to better engagement with the community and higher spatial design qualities.

Residents and authorities ranked second and third. The information provided by residents was more about their own actions and feelings during participation, which plays the role of Plain Folks Propaganda, and thus can eradicate distance and enhance the readers’ acceptability [97]. Scholarly quotes add credibility, precision, and truthfulness [98] to these coverages and attract readers’ attention.

3.4. Provide Access to the Attitudes of the Public and Other Participants

According to journalism studies, the relationship between news coverages and the public voice is not one-directional. The target audience’s interest also affects the media judgement of an event or issue [69,99]. Mass media reporting action can be used as a potential way to understand public attitudes and thus guide the action plan in the next step of practice.

Tendentious reports from newspapers can indirectly reflect the positive public opinion of the Chinese people toward participatory urban gardening. A more direct example is a reader’s letter to a newspaper in Beijing. In this letter, a general reader expressed her support after seeing a report about a participatory urban gardening project. Although such expression may come from sudden changes that have occurred after long neglect [100], the motional trend is still beneficial for the development of participatory landscape revitalization.

Furthermore, republications are considered an indicator of public opinion [101]. From the perspective of the participants, the most prominent republishing platforms in Table 2 are the industry web portal, government website, university website, and design company website. This reflects the fact that coverages are effectively disseminated to participants and repromoted as a model by them. Industry web portals can be further categorized based on sectors such as social development, economy, tourism, design, and property development, among others, reflecting the diverse nature of interest sectors in participatory urban gardens. Their republications can be seen as evidence of the motivational effect, which is consistent with Ku’s case study [102] in Hong Kong.

4. Discussion

Our empirical research revealed four promoting effects of the mass media on participatory landscape revitalization. However, we must circle back to the beginning of our discovery: the emergence of coverages in the mass media. The action is the foundation of all promoting effects. In the following sections, we will combine the results to discuss the role of landscape revitalization in urban transformation and the cooperation between landscape and media.

4.1. Landscape Revitalization as a Solution for City

Mass media acts as a filter for the information consumed by the public [103]. The survey shows that, participatory urban gardening is of considerable news value to the mass media. News value is the quality that objective news facts hold, to meet public demand [104]. Journalists tend to use constructive journalism to describe landscape revitalization as a positive way to solve urban problems. This suggests that the view of landscape as a medium and pathway of sustainable urban development [105,106,107] is no longer limited in relevant industries.

Landscape revitalization improved the urban public realm for high-density cities while reutilizing existing urban land, especially vacant parcels that are difficult to regenerate [13]. Contemporarily, the public has more forms and paths to deeply participate in landscape revitalization. Instead of simply offering ideas and opinions, citizens can further participate in the spheres of construction, maintenance, and management. Our research shows that news portrayal indicates the unique role of landscape architecture in urban transformation, which might explain the mass media’s choice to focus on landscape revitalization. Consequently, landscape designers and planners should be confident that most journalists are constantly and continually focusing on what we consider the most important.

Previous studies have suggested that municipalities should provide sufficient information to encourage community participation in renewal initiatives [13] and have mentioned the positive role of mass media [108]. Considering the complex relationship between the government and the mass media, the exposure of participatory urban gardening may be related to the promotional purposes of the Chinese government. However, according to public presentations by landscape architects, participatory urban gardening in China started from the bottom. Landscape architects are the main promoters of these experimental projects, a fact confirmed by the key roles of designers in news stories demonstrated in this study. It was only after being noticed that these gardens received public attention and government support. After exposure, landscape architects also received more entrustments and participated in more participatory landscape revitalization projects. Thus, the coverages highlighted that the landscape architect is more than a technical consultant offering professional services [109]. Furthermore, this finding is contrary to the previous research results of Zhuang et al. [110] on stakeholder characteristics in urban renewal in China. In micro-landscape renewal, landscape professionals can have significant influences on urban renewal decision-making through public discourse and be influenced by the decision-making results.

4.2. Potential for Landscape Architects to Collaborate with Journalism

Some studies have proposed the importance of discourse power in urban renewal from the perspective of spatial politics [111]. In addition, the communication barrier between the professional discourse system and the public discourse system is also an important factor that affects urban renewal [112]. Our results show that design expertise can be empowered by media discourse in participatory design. Mass media use public discourse to explain what we want to express. By being reported, professionals can further establish connections with the journalists, proactively create news stories, and provide viewpoints, and hence, influence the news frame [113] and disseminate their views [114]. Thus, working with the media can help them gain a voice and promote social awareness of landscape architecture and urban green space to obtain the biggest allies in shaping the built environment.

The reproduction of reports by online platforms reflects the trend of media convergence, which is encouraged at the national level in China [115]. Landscape architects should also take this trend seriously because media convergence can offer a wider and more convenient way of public dialogue and has the potential to facilitate communication between specialists and non-specialists by combining the credibility of traditional mass media with the advantages of participatory commentary in online media. Furthermore, both online journalism and public spaces have great mutual potential to reinvigorate civic engagement [116,117], thus enhancing the crucial role of landscape architecture in promoting social equity and justice.

To go further, the cooperation should not only be limited to landscape revitalization. As the world is slowly recovering, the global “gardening boom” phenomenon [118] and the amplified inequities in parks and public space access during the COVID-19 pandemic may provide a great time for ambitious and inclusive green space projects. Researchers are amassing a body of evidence [119], providing support for the ongoing construction and optimization of multi-scale urban green and public spaces. However, in the public sphere, there is still great potential for propaganda to prove the rationality of green design and projects [120]. This study proves that landscape architects are blessed with this unique opportunity to be the most appropriate storytellers, since our work entails fusing knowledge and actions of sustainability [121].

Finally, despite the fact that our study focuses on mass media, it unequivocally supports the effectiveness of media communication. Since social media is now considered mainstream media, mass media no longer has exclusive influence over the creation and dissemination of news [122]. In addition to collaborating with professional press and mainstream media, professionals should also be more actively involved in social media to promote our effort. We noted that the role of social media is recognized by industry groups and networks internationally [123], but the understanding is not clear, with a lack of academic research and discussion.

4.3. Limitations and Insights for Future Research

The current article turns the spotlight on the role played by mass media in the dissemination of participatory urban landscape revitalization. The research analyzes the newspaper materials, demonstrating their validity as sources [124], and examines the contributions of discourse that have been neglected so far. Despite its importance, this is just a small step forward. To inform professionals on how to best promote landscape-led urban transformation to the citizenry, much more theoretical and empirical research is required.

First, journalistic practice is different in each country and is subject to the political-economic system, culture, and history [125]. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to use a sample from China to examine the exposure of participatory landscape revitalization in the mass media but does not cover other countries in the world. Reports from the two metropolitans also do not consider the difference of media power at the city scale. Samples from different countries and cities will provide a more comprehensive understanding.

Second, our data exclusively feature newspapers, ignoring other mass media. Collecting and analyzing exposure from other media outlets are the obvious solutions to these limitations, for future research. Magazines and TV shows have currently reported from China. In digital mass media, there are a variety of short-form videos and postings created by media companies in addition to digital secondary broadcast of news and TV shows. Compared to newspapers, these mass media today contribute much less exposure frequency, but the accumulation is anticipated in the future. The evidence and possible finding of media heterogeneity can be enhanced by analyzing various media exposures, which will help to improve the mass media communication plan for participatory landscape rejuvenation.

Third, unlike high-profile news events, the number of reports included the sample project is very limited. Therefore, we still cannot guarantee coverage in the population even though these projects have been reported several times. This leads to the inapplicability of the usual sampling questionnaire survey method for the news audience. In the future, we will consider obtaining the opinions of designers and other participants through interviews to provide supplementary evidence for the communication effect.

Fourth, we are fully aware of the potential limitations of drawing inferences based on an unrepresentative sample. Concerning the differences between landscape revitalization and other vehicles of urban renewal, journalists may focus on entirely different content when producing news. As a result, while encouraging public participation is crucial for all urban renewal efforts, our findings and analyses are not entirely transferable to different urban regeneration strategies. However, to more fully confirm the research hypothesis, we expect that the encouraging results of landscape rejuvenation would encourage exploration in the context of alternative strategies.

Finally, the study, which cuts across disciplines, has referenced the existing research results and theoretical frameworks from journalism and communication studies. This helps us analyze and understand the observed phenomena, and effectively demonstrates the characteristics of the communication and content of the target news. In the future, we hope to conduct further study with researchers of journalism and communication to promote effective collaboration between the two sectors.

5. Conclusions

Finding effective information media technologies is crucial to encourage public participation. By highlighting the function of the media, this article broadens the existing viewpoint. The significance of this study comes from the integration of research methods from many disciplines and the empirical analysis of newspaper accounts of two participation gardens in China. The study’s findings help us better understand the areas where mass media is beneficial. The study shows that mass media can facilitate public participation, through efficient exposure and constructive news production. It can also be a way for participants to communicate with the public by empowering the participants to have a voice and demonstrating the tendency of social opinion. The evidence might be circumstantial, based on inference, rather than on direct evidence, but we still consider it quite convincing.

This research is also relevant regarding landscape architecture’s role because it describes the public discourse in which landscape architecture is thought to have an effective role to play in solving urban problems. The survey asserts the mass media’s willingness to report on participatory gardens. Mass media’s exposures and wide-ranged dissemination provide effective support for the development of participatory urban landscape revitalization, where designers play a vital role. Finally, continuous cooperation between landscape architects and journalism can become a possible means of promoting sustainable landscapes in the future.