Tsan-Kuo Chang

Determinants of International News Coverage in the U.S. Media

This article goes beyond describing media content and places it in a broader theoretical framework by examining some determinants that have been considered important in the study of international news flow. The article attempts to identify the factors that best differentiate those international events that are covered in the U.S. news media from events that are not. The dependent variable was media coverage of international events. Based on previous studies, seven variables were selected as predictors to separate the two groups: potential for social change, normative deviance, relevance to the United States, geographical distance, language affinity, press freedom, and economic system. A stepwise discriminant analysis was used to distinguish between the covered events and not-covered events, emphasizing identification of the most powerful discriminators. Results show that four variables contribute significantly to the discriminant function in distinguishing between covered events and not-covered events: normative deviance of an event, relevance to the United States, potential for social change, and geographical distance.

The Global News and the Pictures in Their Heads A Comparative Analysis of Audience Interest, Editor Perceptions and Newspaper Coverage

/ News as a special kind of social product requires something to have taken place in the first place, to be captured by news people and published by the media, and ultimately to be consumed by the audience. Every stage is crucial for the news manufacturing process. This study examines the triangular relationship among what editors regard as important news, what the audience prefers and what the US and foreign media actually cover. The convergence and divergence of opinions among the audiences and the editors found in this study and media performance in coverage of some specific types of stories in the global context have important implications for a better understanding of the processes and structure of international communication in society.

Mass Communication Research and the Invisible College Revisited: The Changing Landscape and Emerging Fronts in Journalism-Related Studies

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to chart the changing landscape of mass communication research in journalism-related studies over the past two decades and, second, to determine the contemporary form and content of the invisible college in the field through its intellectual configuration and structural interaction. A simple citation count is inadequate; the analysis of co-citation networks should be a better indication of the fields effort to build on its theoretical foundation. The findings suggest that there is some sort of theoretical and methodological convergence in contemporary journalism-related studies.

International Network of Foreign News Coverage: Old Global Hierarchies in a New Online World

Theoretically, the Internet allows news organizations to overcome geopolitical hierarchies in international news flow. Practically, do they? Guided by three perspectives—preferential attachment, world system, and triadic world—this study examines patterns of information flow in online news media. Findings from 223 news Web sites in seventy-three countries show that traditional network structures and world hierarchies are reproduced in online media. In cyberspace, news flow takes place predominantly among core countries and from core countries to the periphery. Geography has no predictive power over news flow. News organizations use the Internet to reinforce old practices, perpetuating existing order among nations.

Reporting AIDS and the Invisible Victims in China: Official Knowledge as News in the People's Daily, 1986–2002

Against the backdrop of the sociology of knowledge as a framework, the purposes of this study are threefold: (1) to examine the discourses surrounding the AIDS news in China; (2) to determine how Chinese people with AIDS and the identification of their social groups are covered at the national level; and (3) to discuss the implications of reporting AIDS as official knowledge for a better understanding of the interplay between the mass media and social structure in China today. Findings indicate that as an epidemic, AIDS in China has not only become invisible in the national news, but also constructed as a nonissue devoid of social consequences in public health communication. It is a disease mostly presented in an “us vs. them” news discourse that helps convey the official knowledge as to how AIDS is to be perceived and understood in the country.

SELECTING DAILY NEWSPAPERS FOR CONTENT ANALYSIS IN CHINA: A comparison of sampling methods and sample sizes

This study compares different sampling methods and sample sizes in the selection of daily newspapers in China for content analysis of the news. Results show that the method of constructed week sampling is more efficient than simple random sampling or consecutive day sampling, and a single constructed week allows reliable estimates of news content in a population of six months of newspaper editions even for highly volatile variables. The weekday-plus-Saturday constructed week sampling, an often-used sampling stratification approach in content analyses of Chinese daily newspapers, however, requires a larger sample size, depending on the types of variables being analyzed.

Rethinking the mass propaganda model: evidence from the Chinese regional press

The purpose of this paper is to call for broader conceptual and more sophistocated methodological approaches to the study of the press in Communist systems, especially after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Through an empirical analysis of the world view of the Chinese regional press, the assumptions behind the conventional mass propaganda model were called into question and reexamined. Using the data collected from five Chinese regional newspapers before and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, this paper argues that the earlier mass propaganda and persuasion model cannot adequately address the fundamental changes in the structure and processes of the contemporary Chinese press as a result of Chinas domestic reform movement and its sustained opening to the West. The data also show that the failure to differentiate between two different concepts - foreign news vs. foreign policy news - in early studies could result in misleading interpretation and conclusion.

From class ideologue to state manager: TV programming and foreign imports in China, 1970–1990

Within the managerial perspective, the purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of Chinas changing socioeconomic structure on its foreign TV programming and to propose a new conceptual approach to explaining the form and content of the contemporary Chinese media system. The general thesis is that as a result of vertical and horizontal fragmentation of state authority since the economic reforms in the late 1970s, mass media in China have become less of a class ideologue and more of a state manager as far as their functional prerequisites are concerned. The 20‐year longitudinal analysis indicated that during the reforms, not only did the number of foreign TV programs flourish, the assortment of content variety also increased greatly, with capitalist countries becoming major suppliers.

CULTURE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ADVERTISING Misguided Framework, Inadequate Comparative Design and Dubious Knowledge Claim

This study reports results from a content analysis of comparative advertising studies published in 11 major journals between 1975 and 2005. In the context of sociology of knowledge, the objective was to determine how we come to know what we know about the relationship between culture and advertising in cross-national settings in terms of competing theories and common methodological practices, and to propose concrete solutions to analytical problems encountered in comparative advertising research. The results show that the framework of existing studies was often misguided and the comparative design inadequate to determine the effect of culture on advertising, leaving the knowledge claim of a causal relationship dubious.

Reporting Public Opinion in Singapore: Journalistic Practices and Policy Implications

The purpose of this article is twofold: to examine the form and content of public opinion reporting in the Singaporean news media and to determine their social implications for public policy decision making. The article analyzes coverage of public opinion polls in the two most important newspapers in Singapore over a three-year span. The data show that public opinion surveys in Singapore are fraught with theoretical and methodological problems and that their reporting in the news media leaves much to be desired. The implication is that manufacturing consent in the news, forced consensus in opinion formation, and uncontested policy debates are likely to breed government complacency.