MA Erasmus Mundus Master
Journalism, Media and Globalization
(joint degree)
Protection or Surveillance?
A Content Analysis of the Coverage of THAAD System in American,
South Korean and Chinese Newspaper
by
Yajie Song
Student ID: 11300523
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s programme Communication Science
Supervisor/Examiner: Prof. Katjana Gattermann
Abstract
Korean Peninsula has been the land of restless for the past 70 years.Since 1940s, the relationship between the two Koreas has experienced fluctuation of tension and ease. Due to the disparities in politics and economics as well as strong influence and political wrestling among US, China, Russia and Japan, Korean reunification has been put on hold (Fang, 2011). This study conducts the framing analysis among the four newspapers in the U.S.,China and South Korea. The study has three focuses: (1) explore the news frames shown in one American, two South Korean and one Chinese newspaper’s coverage about THAAD; (2) identify differences among the three nations’ four newspapers in displaying this framing function ; and (3) analyze how the visibility of these identified frames changed beofre and after the declaration of the address for THAAD’s deployment.
Keywords:THAAD ,Media Frames,South Korea,China,U.S.,North Korea
Introduction
Korean Peninsula has been the land of restless for the past 70 years. At the end of World War II, Japanese troops to the South of 38th parallel surrendered to the United States while to the North of this line troops surrounded to the Soviet Union. Since 1945 Korean Peninsula has been divided into two zones. Republic of Korea, commonly know as South Korea, followed democratic route of the United States established the regime in 1948. Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), which is known as North Korea, established in 1948 too and officially describes itself as a self-reliant socialist state (Socialist Constitution of DPRK, 2014). Since 1940s, the relationship between the two Koreas have experienced fluctuation of tension and ease. Due to the disparities in politics and economics as well as strong influence
and political wrestling among US, China, Russia and Japan, Korean reunification has been put on hold (Fang, 2011).
Since 1993, North Korea has conducted multiple missile tests. In 2006, it defied international objections and conducted the first nuclear test. Afterwards, it continued two more nuclear tests in 2009, 2013 and twice in 2016. On February 6th2016, North Korea
launched long-range missile test. These tests has posed serious challenge to peace in East Asia and clearly violated the United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR) (Easley,2016). Under intense pressure, South Korean government initiated bilateral discussions with the US in 2016 to deploy the missile defense system Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea. This decision caused strong dissatisfaction from China.
The previous frame study of North Korea nuclear test ((Dai & Hyun,2010) showed that the issue was notably domesticated. While American news agency connected the nuclear test to a broader ‘War on Terror’ framework, Chinese news agency favored the negotiation to solve the conflict, and South Korean agency contextualized it as the Cold War legacy. Another study about news media and it’s effect on the public regarding to North Korea (Lim &
Seo,2009) indicates that public opinion is highly related to the news frame and two-way frame flows between government and the news media. The results showed that the U.S. government and the newspaper produced three competing frames to the audience.The public opinion poll showed the changes of frame co-relate with the change of U.S.–North Korean relationships in turn made the American public choose economic sanctions over military solutions toward the country (Lim & Seo,2009). These studies already showed the different frames towards North Korea and media frames are crucial towards public opinion. Out of particular interest,
this study will conduct a comparison of how THAAD system is perceived and presented by the leading newspapers in these countries: the New York Times(U.S.), Guangming
Daily(China), and Korea JoongAng Daily (South Korea). Considering that the deployment of THAAD may cause extreme reaction from North Korea, therefore lead to severe global
consequences and change the diplomatic relationship among China, South Korea and America, how mass media framed THAAD system is the main focus of this study. Different frames can have influences on how people think about THAAD. The change of public opinion can therefore effect the diplomatic relationship among China, South Korea and America. As Simon and Xenos (2000) mentioned, it is the frames that people use to connect between the thoughts and related ideas. The framing effects can cause the change of public opinion thus effect foreign policies (Entman,2004; Lim&Seo,2009), therefore the study is highly scientific and societal relevant. What frames has been used to cover the system, the extent to which the frames were applied, the difference in news frames within and among newspapers and how the frames changed over time are the four main focus of this research.
Theoretical Framework
In the academic circles of communication, many scholars think that "frame" is not a complete developed paradigm (Scheufele, 1999). However this rather vague and contradictory concept is widely used in the new century. Goffman (1974, p. 21) refers to frames as the ‘schemata of interpretation’ that allow individuals ‘to locate, perceive, identify, and label’ surrounding environment and information. Gamson and Modigliani (1987) defined a media frame as “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events… The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue” (p. 143)
in a conceptual way. The framing and coverage of news and events in the mass media can thus affect how audience understand the issue to a large extent (Piece, Tewksbury & Powers, 1995).
In fact, frame theory field includes three aspects: the first is from the angle of news production to study how the media framework is constructed; then is from the perspective of media content to analyze what is the media frame; finally from the view of effect to analyze how the audience receive and process information, namely the audience frame (Chen, 2007). The angles of news production and the view of effect need to be analyzed through survey and experiment, which do not fit the methodology of this content analysis.Based on the needs of the current research, the focus is on the media content since the study will conduct
quantitative content analysis.
After analyzing the news coverage of American and European media, Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) developed five different types of media frame:(1) Conflict frame (2) Human interest frame (3) Economic consequences frame(4) Morality frame(5) Responsibility frame. Based on this classification, Shou (2012) made five different frames for the different portray of Tibet between Chinese and American newspapers, which are (1) the human rights, (2) the colonialism versus native conflict, (3) the unification versus independence, (4) the attribution of responsibility, and (5) the human interest frames. The results showed the frames of Tibet are significantly different within and between the two newspapers, and the change over years are also significant.For this research, I will modify these five categories and develop my own frames to fit in my specific research purpose, which is to analyze the different frames of THAAD system within and among different newspapers. Here is a the
description for my own frames regarding to THAAD issue.
1. Pro- Versus Anti-THAAD Conflict Frame. Chinese government concerns that the US intends to spy on China by deploying THAAD in South Korea. Monitoring radius of X-band radar in THAAD is 2000km, which means more than half of China is within the surveillance range (Wang,2016). According to Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, “The deployment of THAAD system is far beyond the defense needs of the Korean Peninsula, it will not help the peace and stability in the area.” (Soho News, 2016). Chinese officials claim the main reason for the deployment is that America wants to supervise the military moves in China and Russia since the capital Seoul is not even in the defensive range (Observer,2016). Also according to China, North Korea’s situation need to be solved by peace treaty and negotiation instead of giving joint military exercise every now and then.Some protests happen in South Korea, claiming deployment of THAAD will destroy the local economy and threat the health of local people.
2. Human Interest Frame. The frame of human interest is defined as “the frame brings a human face or an emotional angle to the presentation of an event, issue, or problem”
(Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000,p.95). This frame seek to make the news personal, dramatic or “emotional” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96) to arouse audiences’ interest. Radar electromagnetic radiation can damage the health of local residents and if the war ever happens, District de Seongju, where THAAD will be deployed in, would be the first target of missiles.
3. Economic Consequences Frame. Several anti-South Korea movements happened among the Chinese public, calling for a boycott of South Korean goods, foods, television programs and entertainers. The Chinese citizens have volunteered to stop buying Korean
products and going to Korean supermarkets. Especially the boycott to Lotte Co., a
multinational conglomerate which allowed the South Korean government to use one of its golf course to deploy THAAD, has made the conglomerate lose billions Korean Won each month and close 87 shopping malls in China ( Tencent News,2017).
4. North Korea’s Responsibility Frame. Responsibility frame “presents an issue or problem in such as way as to attribute responsibility for its cause or solution to either the government or to an individual or groups” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96). The South Korean and American officials insist that North Korea’s nuclear experiments and missile development are the reasons why THAAD is needed. The South Korea insists THAAD is not about politics but national security, which is the only way to protect the country and citizens from North Korea.The U.S. and South Korea keep stating that THAAD is a pure defense system, and will not damage Chinese or Russian interest.
Hypotheses
Scheufele (1999) suggests at least five factors may potentially affect how media could frame a specific subject : (1) social norms and values, (2) organizational pressures and
constraints, (3) pressures of interest groups, (4) journalistic routines, and (5) the ideological or political orientation of journalists. Edelman (1993, p. 232) also indicates that the media
frames are based on“ideology and prejudice”. Due to the different ideologies and social values among China, US and South Korea, the journalists in the three countries may have different routines too. According to Shoemaker & Reese (1996), the influence from ideology level are the outermost layer. The politics is one of the most important part of ideology. Therefore the politics can influence the media frame to an large extent.
The political context determines the relationship between the media and government and the degree of press freedom. China ranks as one of the least press free country in the world according to RSF 2017 ,namely 176thout of 180 countries, while South Korea and U.S. ranks
at 63rdand 43rdrespectively. The main stream media in China are mostly controlled by the
Communist Party and the party will make the political decisions regarding to the diplomatic policies. The different voice is barely heard over the political sensitive issues. South Korea as one of the new emerging democratic countries, the political context is relatively free and follow the pattern of other democratic societies. As press freedom is a pillar of the constitution in democratic societies, in U.S. only low levels of legal regulation exist for journalism in order to enable the media to fulfill their watchdog function as the ‘fourth estate’ (McQuail [1983] 2000; Fengler et al. 2014). The country been seen as the place where the press freedom is protected by constitution. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution proves that the right of free speech is protected in U.S. Thus, I develop my first hypothesis H1:Chinese, American and South Korean newspaper use different frames to cover THAAD system. The US keeps stating that THAAD is a pure defense system, and will not damage Chinese or Russian interest. South Korea also insists THAAD is not about politics but
national security, which is the only way to protect the country and citizens from North Korea. While China has been against THAAD from the beginning and Chinese government concerns that the US intends to spy on China by deploying THAAD in South Korea. Monitoring radius of X-band radar in THAAD is 2000km, which means more than half of China is within the surveillance range (Wang,2016). The articles from Chinese newspaper may focus more on the radar surveillance and the harm to the relationship between and China and South Korea.
Based on above reasons, I develop my sub-hypotheses :H1a:America and South Korea share similar media frames. They both claim THAAD has nothing about politics. H1b:conflict frame is the dominant frame for Chinese articles. China’s clear anti-THAAD attitude may lead to the emphasis on the pretests in South Korea, but South Korean government’s announcements are pro-THAAD so news in the newspaper may follow the same pattern.
It is reasonable to assume the frames will change over time since the event is a dynamic progress. The emphasis of the report may change with the year according to the different stages of deployment. During the study of a racial issue, Kellstedt (2003) found that media frames back up different points of view as time goes by. Also Lim and Seo’s study (2009) showed that frame dominance of North Korea over time is apparent in The New York Times. In terms of its magnitude,the military threat frame is preferred in March, and dialogue partnering in April but later on it became human rights frame. Taking a longitudinal look at THAAD issue will make it easier to analyze the different emphasis of the issue within the different phases.On September 30th 2016, the U.S. and South Korea announced that THAAD would be relocated to Lotte Skyhill Seongju Country Club (Yonhap,2016), the decision went furious in China and the boycott of Lotte Group started and the protest in Seongju county continued. This date also became the time node for the change of frames within the
newspapers. Here I develop my second hypothesis:H2 the frame used by four newspapers will change after the declaration of the new address for THAAD . I would expect at the beginning the conflict frame is dominant in general and after the declaration the human interest frame and economic consequence frame show up and become more dominant. At the beginning ,the news are mostly about the announcements from governments and officials. Since the three
governments take contradictory stands, the conflict frame may be dominant in the beginning. As time goes by, more focus may change to the effect of the announcements in economy and health issue.
Data and Method
Data sources
Three daily broadsheet newspapers from each country would be the subjects of the study. They are the New York Times, Guangming Daily, and Korea JoongAng Daily.
The American newspaper is The New York Times, founded in 1851, ranks as the second largest circulated newspaper in U.S. (IFABC,2013). The New York Times has won 122 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper.
The Chinese newspaper is Guangming Daily. The paper is one of the official organs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, with a circulation of 340 thousand, ranks as the fifth largest circulated newspaper in China (IFABC,2013). The original choice was People’s Daily, which is ranked as one of the world’s top ten newspapers by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). However, the database of People’s Daily are no longer available anywhere except for its own staff. So I changed to Guangming Daily, which has the similar amount of articles covering THAAD system.See table 1.
The South Korean newspapers is Korea JoongAng Daily, founded is 1965, the biggest daily newspaper in South Korea. The newspaper has three versions, Korean, English and Chinese version. This study will analyze both the English and Chinese version due to the Korean language barrier. The English edition is in alliance with the International New York
Times, but the content are different from the New York Times. By searching with the keyword THAAD, the results in the English edition Korea JoongAng Daily are different from the results in the New York Times.
These three newspapers are all influential and highly respected quality media outlets in each country.They all have large circulation and could reach a broad audience since all of them are nationwide distributed. The three newspapers have been covering significant events around world more than 50 years and have high reputation among the public of their
respective countries. Time Frame:
This content analysis will analysis the articles published from February 2016 to April 17th2017. From February 2016, the negotiation between South Korean and American
government officially started and Chinese government objected this deployment because it could jeopardize China's "legitimate national security interests" (Huanqiu, 2016). Over a time
Table 1. Monthly distribution of the articles including the key word THAAD (萨德）
2016 Feb. 2016 Mar. 2016 Apr. 2016 May 2016 Jun. 2016 Jul. 2016 Aug. 2016 Sept. 2016 Oct. 2016 Nov. 2016 Dec. 2017 Jan. 2017 Feb. 2017 Mar. 2017 Apr. till 17 Total The New York Times 9 4 0 0 0 7 5 6 0 0 4 2 6 18 5 66 People's Daily 7 3 0 0 4 11 12 7 7 3 8 4 5 8 1 80 Guang Ming Daily 2 1 0 1 2 5 13 6 0 1 3 2 2 8 2 48 Korea JoongAng Daily (CN) 50 17 6 4 21 99 75 56 21 17 25 35 30 80 20 556 Korea JoongAng Daily (EN) 54 19 7 4 15 126 102 53 22 15 23 68 64 136 49 757
span of 14 months, the samples cover the time since the beginning of the U.S. South Korean discussion to the most up to date news.Articles from The New York Times will be collected from LexisNexis. Articles from Guangming Daily and Korea JoongAng Daily will be collected from the their official website. The details of monthly distribution can be seen in Graph1.
The samples for this study will be collected through two steps. First, I use the keyword search with THAAD (or 萨德系统) during the time frames to retrieve articles. Until April 17th 2017, there are 66 articles in The New York Times, 48 articles in Guangming Daily, 556
articles in the Chinese edition of Korea JoongAng Daily, and 757 from English edition. Second, I will use the systematic sampling to select the samples. All the articles from The New York Times, Guangming Daily will be selected. For Chinese and English edition of Korea JoongAng Daily, each month’s ten percent articles will be selected. For the months which have less than ten articles, the sample amount will be rounded to one. The ten percent articles are randomly selected based on the simple random sampling skill. The random samples are chosen from the website random.org which generate the random numbers and it will generate random numbers within the preset range. After selecting all the samples from the website and database, the validity of the samples are examined. The invalid samples are the articles only mention THAAD once in a sentence without further explanation and contribute little to the theme. The total amount of the valid samples is 221. The distribution of the samples are shown in table 2.
Table 2: Breakdown of the samples collected from the four newspapers Variables and measures
Total chosen
results Invalid samples Validsamples % of validsamples
The
New York Times
66 5 61 27.60
Guang Ming Daily 48 7 41 18.55
Korea JoongAng Daily (CN) 56 5 51 23.08 Korea JoongAng Daily (EN) 76 8 68 30.77 Total 246 25 221 100
Ten percent of the samples are randomly selected for the pretest. After the pretest,the four initiatory frames are identified: (1) pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame (2) human interest frame (3) economic consequences frame and (4) North Korea’s responsibility frame.
To examine my four frames, I design the code book based on the description of each frame presented in the theory section. The full version of code book can be seen in Appendix A. Specific informational items that constitute each frame (also called frame indicators) are identified in each initiatory frame.Each article is examined by giving presence or absence to the frame indicators of four frames separately. Each frame has two to five indicators. The presence of each indicators is coded as 1, while the absence is coded as 0. The presence of indicators reveal to what extent a frame is shown in an article.
Frame visibility is to reveal to what extent a frame can be detected by the readers. Each present indicator for each frame is coded as 1. For the visibility of each frame, the presence of the indicators for this frame are added and averaged. The range of visibility level is from 0.00 (absent) to 1.00 (present) (Semetko & Valkenburg,2000).
Intercoder reliability
Two political communication graduate students in UvA are trained as coders.Both of the coders can speak fluently English and Chinese. A randomly selected 10 percent of the total samples are used for the intercoder reliability. The average agreement for the New York Times is 92.85%, for Guangming Daily is 95.23%, for Korea JoongAngDaily (Chinese) is 94.64%, and for Korea JoongAngDaily (English) is 91.66%. The breakdown of intercoder reliability results for each frame indicator is detailed in Appendix B.
The aim of the study is to analysis if the frames applied in the reports regarding to THAAD in the New York Times (NYT), Guangming Daily(GMD), Korea JoongAngDaily (Chinese)(JCN) and Korea JoongAngDaily (English) (JEN) are different. The study also look into the changes of frames within the past 14 months in the selected four newspapers.
Factor analysis
To identify if the frame indicators or information items are clustering to build the recognizable frames, I have conducted a principal component analysis (PCA) with fourteen frame indicators that measure four pre-identified frame (pro versus anti-THAAD conflict, human interest, economic consequences and North Korea’s responsibility). Three questions that did not cluster properly were deleted, leaving eleven valid indicators. The adjusted details can be seen in the table factor.All the Eigenvalue-criterion (bigger than 1: eigenvalue
component 1 is 3.34; component 2 is 2.53;component 3 is 1.85; and component 4 is 1.25 ) as the Scree Plot show that there are indeed four components. Together, these components explain 64,03% of the variance in the original items. After a Varimax with Kaiser Normalization Rotation, we can now label the components: (1) pro versus anti-THAAD conflict (2) human interest (3) economic consequences and (4) North Korea’s responsibility. Details are shown in table 3.
Rotated Component Matrixa
Component
1 2 3 4
Does the article focus on one person or a small group of people? (e.g. people from the same town)
.884 Does the article report the private or
personal lives of actors involved in this issue?
Does the article show the feeling of
anger? .792
Does the article mention how individuals are affected by the issue?
.757 Does the article describe or imply
Chinese government use official or unofficial policies to suppress the tourism to South Korea ?
.868
Does the article describe or imply South Korea’s economy losses due to the revenge of Chinese government over the deployment of THAAD?
.810
Does the article mention or imply that China is rejecting the deployment of THAAD?
.885 Does the article mention or imply
disagreement between Chinese and South Korea government?
.825 Does the article describe or imply
THAAD is for America to supervise Chinese military moves and violate Chinese interests?
.615
Does the article mention that THAAD is only for national security of South Korea?
.925 Does the article describe or imply
THAAD is for South Korea and American military sites to supervise North Korea’s military moves?
.907
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
*some of the questions are adopted and rephrased from Semetko and Valkenburg (2000)
Table 3: Principal Component Analysis. Reliability
The internal consistencies of the items that comprise each frame were measured by Cronbach’s alphas. The alpha values were .71 for the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict
frame, .84 for the human interest frame, .82 for the economic consequences frame, and .85 for the North Korea’s responsibility frame. The Cronbach’s alphas for the four frames were all higher than .60, producing indeed four frames for latter analyses.
Difference in news frames within and among newspapers
To conduct the inferential statistical analyses, the presence of indicators for each of the four frames were added and standardized to obtain a value for each article. Table 4 reports the means and standard deviations for the visibility of news frames. Table 5 lists the percentage of frames observed in the four newspapers. A General Linear Model (GLM) analysis using repeated measures and the results of a series of ANOVA tests further show the differences in the presence of news frames within and between the four newspapers.
Table 4:means and standard deviations for the visibility of news frames
Frames The
New York Times
Guangming Daily Korea JoongAngDaily (CN) Korea JoongAngDaily (EN)
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Conflict .85 .26 .59 .36 .41 .36 .54 .35 Human Interest .20 .35 .13 .30 .05 .17 .10 .27 Economic Consequences .28 .43 .08 .22 .27 .43 .23 .36 Responsibility .80 .35 .12 .29 .61 .45 .55 .45 Frames The
New York Times
Guangming Daily Korea JoongAngDaily (CN) Korea JoongAngDaily (EN) N % of all the frames found in the newspaper N % of all the frames found in the newspaper N % of all the frames found in the newspaper N % of all the frames found in the
Table 5: the percentage of frames observed in the four newspapers.
The results of the GLM tests indicate whether the visibility of news frames have significant difference within a newspaper. Bonferroni adjustment is used to for post-hoc comparisons.
Within the NYT, the visibility differed significantly across the four frames
(F(1,60)=60.37, p<.001). The visibility between the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame and the human interest frame, the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame and the economic consequences frame, the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame and the North Korea’s
responsibility frame, the human interest frame and the the North Korea’s responsibility frame, and the economic consequences frame and the North Korea’s responsibility frame was
significant (p<0.001). Within the NYT the human interest frame was the least observable frame (M=.20,SD=.35), whereas the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame was the most visible frame (M=.85,SD=.26) , followed by the North Korea’s responsibility frame (M=.80,SD=.35)).
The difference within the visibility of the frames in GMD was also significant
(F(1,40)=43.65,p<.001). Similar to NYT, the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame was also the most observable frame(M=.59,SD=.36). In stark contrast with its American counterpart,
newspaper * Conflict 154 47 72 67 62 38 109 44 Human Interest 38 12 18 17 10 6 22 8 Economic Consequence s 35 11 7 7 29 18 41 17 Responsibilit y 98 30 10 9 62 38 75 38
the North Korea’s responsibility frame was the second least observable one (M=.12,SD=.29), while the economic consequences frame was the least visible frame (M=.08,SD=.22). As for JCN, the difference was also significant. (F(1,50)=30.58,p<.001). The North Korea’s responsibility frame was the most perceptible frame (M=.61, SD=.45), while the least
observable frame is the human interest frame (M=.05,SD=.17). JEN shared the similar pattern as JCN, which also had significant difference (F(1,67)=54.14,p<.001) with the frames. The North Korea’s responsibility frame was also the most observable frame (M=.55,.45), while the human interest frame was also the least visible one (M=.10,SD=.27).
A series of One-way ANOVA tests were conducted to compare the means of the visibility of the frames in the four newspapers. The detailed results are in Table 6.
Frames: The New York Times n=61 Guangming Daily n=41 Korea JoongAng Daily (CN) n=51 Korea JoongAng Daily (EN) n=68
Mean(SD) Mean(SD) Mean(SD) Mean(SD) F df Sig. Conflict .85 (.26) .59 (.36) .41 (.36) .54 (.35) 16.93 3,217 .000 Human Interest .20 (.35) .13 (.30) .05 (.17) .10 (.27) 2.94 3,217 .035 Economic Conseque nces .28 (.43) .08 (.22) .27 (.43) .23 (.36) 2.65 3,217 .050 Responsib ility .80 (.35) .12 (.29) .61 (.45) .55 (.45) 23.78 3,217 .000
Table 6: One-way ANOVA tests
First,the difference in the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame was confirmed
(F(3,217)=16.93,P<.001). The pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame in NYT(M=.85,SD=.26) was significantly more perceptible than in GMD (M=.59,SD=.36),JCN (M=.41,SD=.36), and JEN (M=.54,SD=.35). Post-hoc tests showed that between GMD and JCN (p=.07) , GMD and
JEN ((p=1.00) , and JCN and JEN (p=.24) the difference in conflict frame was not significant. Second, the difference in human interest frame was also confirmed (F(3.217)=2.942,p=.04). The human interest frame in NYT (M=.20,SD=.35) is more observable than in JCN
(M=.05,SD=.17). Post-hoc test showed that the difference was not significant between NYT and GDM (p=1.00), NYT and JEN (p=.27), GMD and JCN (p=1,00), GMD and JEN (p=1.00), or JCN and JEN (p=1.00). Third, the difference in the economic consequences frame was not confirmed (p=0.05). The post-hoc test showed none of the newspaper had observable
difference in the economic consequences frame. Fourth, the difference in the North Korea’s responsibility frame was confirmed (F(3,217)=23.78,P<0.001). The North Korea’s
responsibility frame in NYT (M=.80,SD=.35) was more observable than in GMD
(M=.12,SD=.29) and JEN (M=.55,SD=.45). Also the responsibility frame in GMD was less perceptible in GMD than in JCN (M=.61,SD=.45) and JEN. The post-hoc showed that the difference was not significant between NYT and JCN (p=.07) or JCN and JEN (p=1.00). Changes in frame use over time
A series of t-test were conducted to analysis whether the visibility of frames significantly differed within a newspaper before and after the declaration of the address for the deployment of THAAD. The result showed only NYD had significant difference in the pro versus
anti-THAAD conflict frame (t(47)=2.96,p=.005). Before the declaration (phase 1)
(M=.97,SD=.09) had more significant observable pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame than after the declaration (phase 2) (M=.82,SD=.28). There were no significant difference in GMD(p=.56), JCN (p=.66) or JEN (p=.41) for the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame. Human interest frame had no significant difference between two phases in NYT (p=.64),
GMD (p=.31), JCN (p=.81), or JEN (p=.66). Economic consequences frame also had no significant difference between 2 phases in NYT (p=.91), GMD (p=.98), JCN (p=.79) or JEN (p=.99). North Korea’s responsibility frame did not have any significant difference between two phases in NYD (p=.23), GMD (p=.25), JCN (p=.76) or JEN (p=.65) either. The details can be seen in table 7. Graph 2 showed the difference for pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame in two phases in the four newspapers.
Table 7: Comparison of four newspapers
Frames The New York Times n=61
Guangming Daily n=41
t-value df Sig. t-value df Sig.
Conflict 2.96 47 .005 .58 39 .562 Human Interest .47 59 .64 1.12 5.38 .310 Economic Consequen ces -.12 59 .91 -.03 39 .981 Responsibil ity 1.23 17 .23 1.17 39 .249 Korea JoongAngDaily (CN) n=51
Korea JoongAngDaily (EN) n=68
t-value df Sig. t-value df Sig.
Conflict .43 49 .664 -.82 66 .414 Human Interest .23 49 .813 .43 66 .666 Economic Consequen ces .26 49 .793 -.01 66 .995 Responsibil ity -.30 49 .760 -.46 16.34 .649
Phase 1:before September 30th Phase 2:after September 30th
Graph2:the difference for pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame in two phases in the four newspapers
Discussion and Conclusions
This study has three focuses: (1) explore the news frames shown in one American, two South Korean and one Chinese newspaper’s coverage about THAAD; (2) identify differences among the three nations’ four newspapers in displaying this framing function ; and (3) analyze how the visibility of these identified frames changed beofre and after the declaration of the address for THAAD’s deployment.
The framing analysis is applied in this study to discuss the how the different frames used in American, Chinese and South Korean newspapers.The study try to identify whether there are observable frames among the coverage of THAAD system in American, Chinese and South Korean newspapers, and if so,to identify the difference in the visibility of the frames within and among the newspapers. The purposes of this study are: first,to use framing theory to analysis the coverage of relatively new and on-going issue, and fill in the blank of the
political sensitive issue ( in the case, the disagreement among Chinese, South Korean and American governments) ;third, the frame used in two phases that covered in three different kinds of idiosyncratic media (namely China,South Korea and U.S. in this case).
News frames
The four incipient frames in this study all survived factor analysis test, which are (1) pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame, (2) human interest frame, (3) economic consequences frame and (4) North Korea’s responsibility frame.The human interest frame, economic consequences frame and North Korea’s responsibility frame are modified from the previous studies (e.g. Semetko & Valkenburg ,2000; Shou ,2012). Pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame is the new frame developed from this study.
Visibility of news frame
To analyze the different frames among different newspapers, the frames have to be identified first. The visibility of the frame reflects to what extant the frame is shown in the article. The finding show that all the four frames can be identified in the coverage of the four chosen newspapers and the magnitude of each frame within the separate newspaper varies. The most visible frame in the New York Times is pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame and the least visible frame is the human interest frame. Both the Chinese and English version of Korea JoongAngDaily have the different dominant frame comparing to the New York Times, which is the North Korea’s responsibility frame. The least visible frame is also the human interest frame. The economic consequences frame ranks as the third visible frame in both the New York Times and Korea JoongAngDaily. The H1a is partially confirmed that the New York Times and Korea JoongAngDaily share the same least and third visible frame but differ
in the most and second visible frames. The most visible frame in the Guangming Daily is the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame and account for more than sixty percent of the total identified frames in Guangming Daily. The H1b is confirmed that pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame is the dominant frame for Chinese news reports.
Conflict frame is the frame mostly used in U.S. news in a range of issues (Neuman et al.1992, pp.61-62) and Chinese media also like to use conflict frame to catch audiences’ attention. Especially the when the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi repeated the objection of deployment several times. Guangming Daily as one of the government’s organ media served its role properly.
Human interest frame starts to be visible as the latter period during the whole 14 months time period. The starts to show after the first time South Korean and U.S. government decide the address for the deployment THAAD, which is on July 8th2016. Latter on the two
government made the second time of declaration to change the original address on September 30th. While the other frames have emerged from the beginning, the human interest frame
naturally get less visibility than other frames.
Economic consequences frame does not have significant difference among the New York Times, Guangming Daily and Korea JoongAngDaily. Economic consequences frame has relatively low presence in all the four newspapers. Eleven percent in the New York Times, seven percent in Guangming Daily, eighteen percent in Korea JoongAngDaily (CN) and seventeen percent in Korea JoongAngDaily (EN). None of the four newspapers chose economic consequence as the dominant frame to do the coverage. Therefore, the frame does not differ much since it has limited influence comparing to the other dominant frames.
North Korea’s responsibility frame is the most dominant frame in both Chinese and English version of Korea JoongAngDaily, the second dominant frame in the New York Times, but the least visible frame in Guangming Daily. The governments tends to use national media to defend their stand in the controversial issues. As organ media for the Communist Party, Guangming Daily use the conflict frame to support the government’s objection on this THAAD issue and barely use North Korea’s responsibility frame that will be beneficial for the counterpart South Korean. South Korea and Japan traditional has close relationship with the U.S. in both political level and economic level. The deployment of THAAD is initiated by both U.S. and South Korea government, to justify this move, the government led by Park Geun-hye insists that the THAAD system is only for the self defense towards South Korea and national security is more important than anything. Both Korea JoongAngDaily and the New York Times use this statement to justify the country’s stance and try convince the audience to support the decision. Even though president Park Geun-hyn got impeached later on, which some media suggested THAAD is one of the reason for the impeachment
(Xinhua,2017), the new government’s attitude toward THAAD is still unclear. The deployment is still continuing.
H1:Chinese, American and South Korean newspaper use different frames to cover THAAD system is partially confirmed. Except for the economic consequences frame, the others three frames all has significant difference among the four newspapers.
However, the change of frame before and after the declaration is not significant except for the pro versus anti-THAAD conflict frame in the New York Times. Fourteen months’ time period does not cover the whole process of the deployment of THAAD. The deployment is still going
on and will not be finished before the end of this year. The new South Korea government is considering to stop the deployment to repair frozen diplomatic relationship with China. The THAAD radar is not in South Korea until April 25th2017, which is after the ending date of
the sample collection on April 17th2017. The frame may have more significant differences
among the four newspapers after THAAD is put into use. The conflict frame in the New York Times is less visible in phase 2 (after September 30th) than in phase 1 (before September 30th).
The H2 the frame used by four newspapers will change after the declaration of the new address for THAAD is rejected. The differences in human interest frame, economic consequences frame and North Korea’s responsibility frame are not significant. Only the conflict frame in the New York Times has significant change,not in any other three newspapers.
Limitations of the study
The major limitation of the study is that three of the indicators are deleted from the original codebook, which are not accurately reflecting the frames underlying the articles. Another limitation is that THAAD deployment is still on going, the longitudinal change of THAAD should be more visible after the deployment is finished. Fourteen months is still a bit too short for the longitudinal analysis. The future study could wait till the deployment of THAAD is finished.
Another limitation is that the lack of valid database for three of the chosen newspapers. The samples are collected from the official website of each newspaper, but the sample number changes over time. Some samples are missing while other samples may show up after some time.The study could only reply on the most lasted version of the sample size. This may due
to the online censorship in China and South Korea.
Due to the time limitation, not all the result from the keyword searching can be used for the research, only 10 percent of article from Korea JoongAngDaily are used for the current research. Also due to the language barrier, the South Korean news are not analyzed with the local language. Even though the Chinese and English versions are available, the Korean version may use the different frames in the coverage, but as no coder could speak Korean, the only option left is to use the other language versions.
The study only conducted the content analysis, so the media effect can not be measured. The relation between public opinion and frames can not be measured. The future study could combine the content analysis with survey or experiment to do the systematic framing analysis. Words count:6838
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Appendix A: Codebook Variable
name Variable label Instructions andvalues
V1 Coder Coder’s number Enter coder’s number
V2 ID Article’s ID number Enter the article’s ID number
V3 Newspaper Newspaper that did the
publication 1=The New York Times2=Guangming Daily 3=Korea JoongAngDaily (CN)
4=Korea JoongAngDaily (EN)
V4 Date Date of publication Enter as mm-dd-yy
V5 Author Author's name Enter the author’s
name
V6 Length Word count
V7-V10 Pro versus Anti-THAAD conflict frame
V7 Does the article mention or
imply
disagreement between Chinese and South Korea government?
0= Absent 1= Present
V8 Does the article mention or
imply that
China is rejecting the deployment of THAAD?
V9 Does the article describe or
imply
THAAD is for America to supervise Chinese military moves and violate Chinese interests?
V10 Does the article mention
that there are protests against THAAD or rejection of deployment in South Korea?
V11-V15 Human Interest Frame
people? (e.g. people from the same town)
V12 Does the article show the
feeling of anger?
V13 Does the article show the
feeling of
compassion,caring or sympathy?
V14 Does the article report the
private or
personal lives of actors involved in this issue?
V15 Does the article mention
how
individuals are affected by the issue?
V16-V18 Economic Consequences Frame
V16 Does the article describe or
imply
South Korea’s economy losses due to the revenge of Chinese government over the deployment of THAAD?
0= Absent 1= Present
V17 Does the article describe or
imply
Chinese government use official or unofficial policies to suppress the tourism to South Korea ?
V18 Does the article describe or
imply
Chinese people stop buying South Korean’s product?
V19-V20 North Korea’s Responsibility Frame
V19 Does the article describe or
THAAD is for South Korea and American military sites to supervise North Korea’s military moves?
V20 Does the article mention
that THAAD is only for national security of South Korea?
Appendix B:
Intercoder Reliabilities
N1=The New York Times N2 =Guangming Daily N3=Korea JoongAng Daily (CN) N4=Korea JoongAng Daily (EN) V7： N1： 83.33% CODER 1： 1 1 0 0 CODER 2： 1 1 0 1 N2： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N3： 75.00% CODER 1： 1 1 1 1 CODER 2： 1 0 1 1 N4： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 1 0 CODER 2： 1 1 1 0 V8： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 0 1 CODER 2： 1 1 0 1 N2： 100% CODER 1： 0 1 1 1 CODER 2： 0 1 1 1 N3： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 1 1 CODER 2： 1 1 1 1 N4： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 1 0 CODER 2： 1 1 1 0 V9： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 1 0 CODER 2： 1 1 1 0 N2： 100%
CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 0 0 CODER 2： 1 0 0 0 N4： 83.33% CODER 1： 1 0 0 0 CODER 2： 1 0 1 0 V10： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 0 0 CODER 2： 1 0 0 0 N2： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 0 0 CODER 2： 1 0 0 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N4： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 0 1 CODER 2： 1 0 0 1 V11： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 0 1 CODER 2： 1 1 0 1 N2： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 1 0 CODER 2： 1 0 1 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N4： 83.33% CODER 1： 0 0 1 0 CODER 2： 0 0 1 1 V12： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 0 1 CODER 2： 1 1 0 1 N2： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 1 0
CODER 2： 1 0 1 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N4： 83.33% CODER 1： 0 0 1 0 CODER 2： 0 0 1 1 V13： N1： 66.67% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 1 N2： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 0 0 CODER 2： 1 0 0 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N4： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 V14： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 0 1 CODER 2： 1 1 0 1 N2： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 1 0 CODER 2： 0 0 1 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N4： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 1 CODER 2： 0 0 0 1 V15： N1： 83.33% CODER 1： 1 0 0 1 CODER 2： 1 0 0 1 N2： 83.33% CODER 1： 0 0 1 0 CODER 2： 0 0 1 0
N3： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N4： 66.67% CODER 1： 0 0 1 1 CODER 2： 0 0 0 1 V16： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 0 1 CODER 2： 1 1 0 1 N2： 83.33% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 0 1 1 0 CODER 2： 0 1 1 0 N4： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 V17： N1： 83.33% CODER 1： 0 0 0 1 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N2: 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N3： 75% CODER 1： 0 1 1 1 CODER 2： 0 1 1 0 N4： 83.33% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 V18： N1： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N2： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 N3： 100%
CODER 1： 0 1 0 0 CODER 2： 0 1 0 0 N4： 100% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0 V19： N1： 100% CODER 1： 1 1 1 0 CODER 2： 1 1 1 0 N2： 66.67% CODER 1： 0 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 1 0 N3： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 1 1 CODER 2： 1 0 1 1 N4： 100% CODER 1： 1 0 1 0 CODER 2： 1 0 1 0 V20： N1： 83.33% CODER 1： 1 1 0 0 CODER 2： 1 1 0 0 N2： 66.67% CODER 1： 0 1 1 1 CODER 2： 0 0 1 1 N3： 75% CODER 1： 1 0 0 0 CODER 2： 1 0 1 0 N4： 83.33% CODER 1： 1 0 0 0 CODER 2： 0 0 0 0
