Framing of Taiwan in the elite newspapers of Australia, Singapore and China

Abstract

This study investigates how three selected Taiwan issues - the "two-state theory" proposed by former President Lee, the 2000 Presidential Election and Inauguration, and China's 2005 "Anti-Secession Law" against Taiwan - were reported and framed in the elite newspapers of China, Singapore, and Australia. The newspapers included: the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, the Straits Times, and the Peoples Daily. The research first examines normative media system theory and the extensive research literature on international news flow as approaches to predicting coverage of the Taiwanese events in the selected newspapers. The limitations of these approaches are analysed. The foundations of news framing analysis are then examined and the limitations of traditional quantitative content-analytic methods of identifying and measuring the frequency of news frames are discussed. A qualitative model of examining news discourse is adopted for the study to investigate how the three events were portrayed or depicted in the selected newspapers. Across the three selected Taiwanese events, nine characteristic news frames and corresponding counter-frames were identified: the politician's portrayal frame, nation's status frame, political system frame, KMT's party-image frame, post-election frame, Taiwan identity frame, law frame, military frame, and the motherland frame. It is argued that not only can qualitative analyses reveal the range of meanings inherent in news discourse, but it can also inform our understandings of international news flow by focussing on what characteristic or dominant meanings are signalled to newspaper readers, and the devices used by newspapers to support this choice of news frames.

Date of Award	2007
Original language	English
Supervisor	Warwick Blood (Supervisor) & Peter PUTNIS (Supervisor)