Framing Taiwan Independence Movement: A content Analysis of International News
Abstract
This research presented a content analysis of how international news media framed Taiwan independence issues. The results indicate that international news media were different from Taiwan local news media; they did not concluded president Chen as a hero of Taiwan independence movement and provided reader a correct definition of rename campaign that was designed to be a tool for promoting Taiwan identity. However, international news media, like Taiwan local news media, lacked balance reports on Taiwan independence issues and revealed their political preferences by reciting more opinions from a particular interest group.
Background
In the 12th of February, Taiwan’s post office dropped China from their names in order to avoid confusion with the postal system of Mainland China. The original name of Taiwan’s post office was Chunghwa (means China in Chinese) Post Co. Ltd. Now it became to Taiwan Post Co. Ltd. According to the government calculation, it would cost 67 million in New Taiwan Dollar (or 2 million in US Dollar) to change signs at 1,321 post offices around the island. The post office was not the only one state-owned firm drops China from name. Following the rename plan led by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), there were another five companies that were fully or partly owned by the state announced name changes to omit China connection over the third week of February in 2007. The current president, Chen Shui-bian, and his party, DPP, wanted more distance between Taiwan and China so that they enthusiastically promoted the rename campaign and the Taiwan identity,
CNN reported these moves of Taiwan state-owned firms; and they believed these moves would be likely to prompt condemnation in Beijing that had claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. On the other hand, the United State, which urged Taiwan and China to get along better, also administered a rebuke. The United States had switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. Nowadays the US government recognizes “one China”, but it is obliged by its Taiwan Relations Act to defend the island from the animus attack from China. It is clear that US government face the confusion of Taiwan’s sovereignty even it had announces its “one China” standpoint. However, the sovereignty of a country should be decided by its people, not the third party, or the other country which shows its intention of aggression. That is why Taiwan government takes the rectification campaign so important; and it insists Taiwan identity can not be build up unless we cut off the relationship with Chinese culture and develop our own. Moreover, Taiwan government believes Taiwanese people can get rid of the fear of military threat from China and have the respect in international conference, such as WTO, when we have strong country identity.
I was surprised this national news was reported by international media so that I would like to know more about how international media frame this kind of campaigns. The rectification campaign is one of tools used by Taiwan government for setting up Taiwan’s identity and achieving Taiwan’s independence. However, Taiwanese media tend to connect rectification campaign and Taiwan’s independence to the current president, Chen Shui-bian, more than to his party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). For this reason, I also would like to know whether international media personalize the issue as Taiwanese media always do. If they did personalize the issue, I would like to know which of international media tend to do it. Moreover, Taiwanese media show their political preference in their reports. Taiwanese people name the media which support ruling DPP on whatever issues “Green Media;” on the other hand, people give the media which bear defend for the opposition party – Koumingdan (KMT) “Blue media.” I am wondering that if international media show their color in the report, why they do it?
Research Question
1. How international media frames Taiwan independence movement? Did they mention any particular politician in their reports? Did they personalize the issue?
2. Did international media connect rename campaign with the independence movement of Taiwan?
3. Did the international printing media show their political preference in their reports?
Rationale for the method used
This report will adapt content analysis to investigate how international printing media represent Taiwan rename campaign. Content analysis is one method for the systematic analysis of communications content. It helps researchers to describe and analyze a particular medium (for example newspaper), or a particular type of media content (such as news, serial drama, text messages), or a particular event or period in time.[1] It also provides researchers a logical way to quantify the relative occurrence of selected features in large samples of texts.
How international media represent the rename campaign is the focus of this report; therefore, content analysis is a necessary method for studying on a large sample of newspaper texts, and making these texts speaks as a group to answer the research questions. In other words, this report, by using content analysis, is going to find out about the intentions of the originator of messages and how they reflect the values from society, government, or media themselves.
(2000) have adopted content analysis to investigate newspaper stories and television news stories in the period of surrounding the Amsterdam meetings of European heads of state in 1997. The purposes of their study were to find out how media frame European politics in news stories, and what the framing effects were. Content analysis helped them to study on a huge amount of news stories produced during the period. The samples of their study included 2,602 newspaper stories and 1,522 television news stories; therefore, their study provide this report a general idea of how to conduct content analysis technically and how to use content analysis for examining and explaining the way media frame social issues.
However, content analysis is not a methodology without any defect. According to (1998), the first problem of content analysis is collecting and maintaining the resources you want to investigate. To get the sustaining resources will cost considerably. Nevertheless, the cost is not the foremost problem. How deep content analysis can answer the question and how researcher can define the variables are the real problems will lead to different result of the same study.
Content analysis is by definition a quantitative method. The purpose of the method is to I identify and count the occurrence of specified characteristics or dimensions of texts, and through thus, to be able to say something about the messages, images, representations of such texts and their wider social significance. The problem, however, is how far quantification is taken in content analysis and to what degree the quantitative indicators that this technique offers are read or interpreted in relation to question about the intensity of meaning in texts, the social impact of texts, or the relationship between media texts and the realities which they reflect.[2]
Method
This section is going to explain the content analysis processes which conducted in this report.
1. The hypotheses
International media reported the issue of Taiwan independence movement without personalization.
International media can connected rename campaign with Taiwan independence movement.
International media recited the opinions from different interest groups.
International media made a balance report of Taiwan independence issue.
2. The population, sample and coding units
In order to analyze how international media reflected Taiwan independent movement, researcher used “TAIWAN INDEPENDENCE” as key word to search historical news on the “Lexis-Nexis” search engine. In addition, researcher assumed there would be news related to Taiwan independence movement and selected February of 2007 as research time frame because CNN released the rename campaign news on 12th of February.
The population
The Lexis-Nexis Professional came out with 171 hits. However, some articles were excluded from the population because they were repeated (38), or comments from blog (4). After that, there were 129 articles left in the population. After that, 37 articles were excluded because they mentioned the key words but referring to a different issues. (e.g. the bearing of Taiwan Independent Movement in China international Policy). Final population was 92 articles.
The sample
The large number of newspaper articles that met selection criteria led researcher to code news articles every other day. This meant that in the odd week, the researcher coded the news articles on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; in the even week, the researcher coded those on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Therefore, there are 30 news articles occurred over the February of 2007.
The coding units
The coding unit of this report was whole news article, which included news title.
3. The coding frame
Researcher developed a series of questions to investigate the underlying dimensions of the sample which all mentioned Taiwan independence movement; and the researcher tried to get answers after analysis. These questions are as following:
[The extent that international media personalized the Taiwan independence movement]
3.1 Did the news stories directly point out Chen Shui-bian as the propellant of Taiwan independence movement without mention his party, DDP, and his alley?
In order to investigate whether the international media personalized the Taiwan independence movement, the question showing above was created. Normally, media linked Taiwan independence movement with present president Chen Shui-bian and ignored the contribution of whole DDP. If the media focus on Chen Shui-bian and skip DDP that means the media tried to personalize the issue and heroize the country leader.
[The connection between re-name campaign and Taiwan independence]
3.2 Did the news stories refer to rename campaign as a method for pursuing Taiwan independence?
The question was designed to find out international media defined the rename campaign in the direct way and represented the real meaning of it.
[The political preference of international media]
3.3 Did the news stories describe various opinions from different interest groups that include DDP, KMT, USA, China and so on?
3.4 Did the news stories give a balance report within different opinions?
3.5 Did the news stories give their support for Taiwan independence movement?
3.6 Did they show their opposition against this movement?
One of fundamental rules of news reporting is reciting opinions truly from related interest groups; in this case, interest groups are Taiwan political parties, and governments of Taiwan, China, and USA. However, media tend to make imbalance news reports because their political or economical consideration. Researcher generated theses questions showed above for examining the phenomena that media tend to reveal their political preferences in the reports; and this research also tried to analyze the correlation between media and their stand point of Taiwan independence issue.
Analysis and finding
[The extent that international media personalized the Taiwan independence movement]
Article(s)
%
Resources from
Article(s)
%
The news stories personalized the issue
10
33.3%
News agent
3
30.0%
By publisher themselves
7
70.0%
The news stories did not personalized the issue
20
66.7%
There were 10 news stories (33.3%) that mentioned Taiwan Independence movement and present Taiwan president, Chen Shu-bian, without referring to his party, DDP. On the contrary, 66.7% of news stories did not personalize Taiwan independence issue, which described president Chen and ruling DDP party both the promoters of Taiwan independence. The news stories that personalized the Taiwan independence issue were mainly from publishers themselves, such as the Financial Times, the Business Times Singapore, the US fed News, the Kyodo News, and the Australian. In the other words, the news stories provided by news agencies could offer readers a background of Taiwan independence movement without personalization, and which were closer to reality.
[The connection between re-name campaign and Taiwan Independence movement]
Article(s)
%
Rename campaign and Taiwan independence movement
Article(s)
%
Rename campaign stories
19
63.3%
Provide correct connection
15
78.9%
Lack providing correct connection
4
21.1%
Not rename campaign stories
11
36.7%
Not all of the samples selected by the researcher were related to rename campaign. Within the samples, there was only 63.3% of news stories noted rename campaign. Most of the rename campaign stories (78.9%) clarified de-sinicizing Taiwan state-owned companies would stir up Taiwan Independence movement. This study investigated the news stories that failed to provide correct connection between rename campaign and Taiwan Independence movement, and found out those caused by reporters who cited commons and criticisms from particular interest groups directly.
[The political preference of international media]
On Taiwan Independence Issue
Article(s)
%
Resource
Article(s)
%
The news articles provided opinions from different interest groups
12
40.0%
News Agent
4
33.3%
By publisher themselves
8
66.7%
The news stories lacked opinions from different interest groups
18
60.0%
News Agent
9
50.0%
By publisher themselves
9
50.0%
The data of answering question 3.3 revealed an opposite result against researcher’s hypothesis. No more than half of the news stories provided readers opinions from assorted interest groups. For example, some of news articles only included the opinion from the government of USA, which did not support Taiwan’s name-change drive, and totally excluded the announcement from Taiwan government. This study took news sources into consideration and found out the source of news stories had minor influence on diversifying opinions. The table above showed the tendency that international news media wrote more arbitrary report than newsagents did.
On Taiwan Independence Issue
Article(s)
%
Resource
Article(s)
%
The news articles provided balance report
7
23.3%
From Xinhua News Agency
0
0.0%
From Central News Agency
0
0.0%
From China post
4
57.1%
From publisher itself
3
42.9%
The news stories lacked balance report
23
76.7%
From Xinhua News Agency
4
17.4%
From Central News Agency
2
8.7%
From China post
4
17.4%
From publisher itself
13
56.5%
Although some of international news media gave readers various opinions from different opinions, they lost balance while reciting these opinions in their reports. Only 23.3% of samples made balance reports, and most of them were from the China post, an English newspaper in Taiwan. In conclusion, international news media failed to made balance reports on Taiwan independence issue; they put too much emphasis on one side opinions and lacked the opposite views.
On Taiwan independence issue
Article(s)
%
The news stories showed their support
0
0.0%
The news storied showed their opposition
4
13.3%
There were no international news media gave their support to Taiwan independence movement in their reports. But, some of them did show their opposition against this movement. These news media were the BBC, the National Business Review, the Associated Press Financial Wire, and the Financial Times. The National Businesses Review and the Associated Press Financial Wire wrote the news stories by themselves. However, the BBC transcribed the news from Xinhua News Agency, one of China news agency, and published Xinhua’s viewpoint from Beijing. On the other hand, the Financial Times adopted the news source from the Central News Agency, which tended to publish opinions against the ruling DDP. These two of media, Xinhua News Agency and the Central News Agency, concluded rename campaign as president Chen’s tool for election and made the real purpose of campaign blur.
In addition, most of International news media showed their political preference by stating opinions from a particular interest group instead of offering their opposition (or support) to Taiwan independence movement in words. For example, there were only the viewpoints from US government and Beijing officers in Xinhua News Agency’s reports. Although the comments on Taiwan independence movement from one of Taiwan media were quoted in one of Xinhua’s reports, these comments were not fairly reflect the views of Taiwan people. It was because this Taiwan news media, TVBS, were established by a Hong Kong company; and more than 50% of its shares were obtained by foreigner from Hong Kong China. Taiwan’s audience criticized TVBS as a spokesman of China government. Therefore, even Xinhua News Agency adopted opinions from Taiwan news media in their reports, it was still unable to represent viewpoint of Taiwan people. The matter went worse as the BBC relied on Xinghua News Agency to provide Asia news. BBC is one of big international news media in the world, its dependence upon one news agency would gave reader a wrong picture of Taiwan independence movement.
Discussion
In this study, there were four problems need to be improved. First of all, the study time frame, only one month, was too short. In addition, the Chinese New Year holiday started at 17th of February so that the quantity of news stories in this month was less then others. It led to the population in this study was small and unrepresentative to whole issue. If the study time frame of this study could be expanded to more than one year, researcher could get more random samples; and which would help researcher to examine whether international news media frame Taiwan independence movement in different ways as time changing.
Secondly, the definitions of each variable were flexible when researcher undertook the coding. For example, the news stories mentioned Chen Sui-bai and his party – DDP at the same time; the researcher should follow the explanation of personalization in this study and code this news as “no personalization news”. However, the news stories also put emphasis on president Chen and ignored the effort contributed by his party. In this case the researcher should code this news as a personalized stories instead of non-personalized stories. Therefore, the study could be unable to reflect the true situation of population if the researcher did not code the news stories while the samples was getting larger. Training another person to code the samples would be a useful method to solve this problem.
The third problem in this study was that the definition of “international news media” was not clarified. Some of news media, such as Kyodo news, the Australian, and the Business Times Singapore, selected from the “Lexis-Nexis” search engine were not “international media”; they were actually the national media. Besides, some of news media, like Xinghua News Agency, were news agency that provides news stories to local or national news media, and not international media at all. In order to avoid the news from national news media and news agency count into population, these media should be excluded during searching on “Lexis-Nexis”.
Finally, other methodologies, such as interview, should be adopted with content analysis for getting deeper answers. For example, in this study, the researcher found out the BBC preferred using the news from Xinghua News Agency; even this news agency personalized Taiwan independence movement in their imbalance reports. Content analysis helped the researcher to discover the correlation, but not the reason. If the researcher could also interview the editor of BBC’ international department, she could get better result for research questions.
Conclusion
Although international news media reported Taiwan independence movement without personalization and provided correct explanation that help readers to know rename campaign as a necessary tool for building Taiwan identity. However, international news media failed to offer readers balance reports that should include various opinions from the Taiwan government, China officers, the US government, or the most of important – voice from Taiwan people. In addition, international media tended to hide their political preference by quoting particular interest groups’ announcements instead of writing their support (or opposition) to Taiwan independence movement. No matter in the rename campaign, or in the independence movement, international news media played a role as megaphone of government; and they made Taiwan people silent on international stage. We all knew Taiwan people had something to say, but international media or Taiwan local media all controled by powerful politicians and framed the issues as politicians wanted.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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