Reporting Sino-American relations in the Trump Era : a quantitative analysis of Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese media coverage

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Running head: REPORTING SINO-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN THE TRUMP ERA

Graduate School of Communication

Reporting Sino-American relations in the Trump Era

A quantitative analysis of Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese media coverage

Student Name: Qiwen Shen Student ID: 11896612

Master’s Thesis

Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Journalism, Media and Globalization Supervisor: Knut De Swert

Words: 7396

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REPORTING SINO-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN THE TRUMP ERA 1

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to shed light on journalistic gatekeeping in Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese media. Inspired by the agenda setting theory, this study expects variations between media outlets would occur on two levels, namely, what to report on and how to report. A quantitative content analysis is used to compare the two regions’ news coverage on how Trump’s presidency impacts Sino-American relations, in terms of selected reporting topics, frames, and tones. The samples were collected from two quality media outlets on each side of the Taiwan Strait, and the time period is set around Trump’s first tour of Asia. The findings in this study indicate that, firstly, media coverage in Mainland China is oriented towards creating positivity and harmony; while Taiwanese media has more negative elements in their journalism, for example, using a risk frame and negative tones. Secondly; regarding media framing and tones, Mainland Chinese media outlets are very consistent with each other, whereas the Taiwanese media outlets differ to a great extent. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of the two social systems.

Key words: Trump, Sino-American relations, Mainland China, Taiwan, gatekeeping, agenda setting, quantitative content analysis

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Reporting Sino-American relations in Trump Era: A quantitative analysis of Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese media coverage

“China is the biggest and best abuser... I do not want China to dump steel into our country.” “I look forward to building an even stronger relationship between our two countries — China and the United States of America — and even closer friendships and relationships between the people of our countries”. Both of the above quotes come from the incumbent US president — Donald Trump (Beauchamp, 2017; USCBC, 2016).

During the Cold War, China and the US had a confrontational relationship which was normalized in 1969. In this current era, as Li (2017) stresses, Sino-American relations lie somewhere in between “cooperation and competition”, within which both “trust and mistrust” exist (p.69). Trump’s presidency does not make the condition simpler, but instead, his

unpredictable policy choices makes predicting the future of Sino-American relations an even more difficult task (Li, 2017). During Trump’s presidential campaign, his speeches contained negatively laden comments on Mainland China, and the aforementioned quote in which he named China an abuser of domestic US industry is an example of that. Additionally, Trump claimed that he would engage in the conduct hawkish strategies towards Mainland China (Thompson, 2016). After being elected US president, Trump’s policies towards Mainland China incited debates regarding potential military escalation and economic issues (Li, 2017). In 2017, Trump conducted a diplomatic tour in Asia, and China was one of the five host countries. In Mainland China, his tour raised discussions on how the presidency of Trump will influence Sino-American relations.

Taiwanese media has always been keeping an eye on the US and Chinese agendas as well. This is not only because the US is one of its most important export markets (Xin, 2010), but also due to the complexity of the history between the U.S., Mainland China, and Taiwan.

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In 1949, as a result of the Chinese Civil War which is still not formally resolved, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took sovereignty over Mainland China and then declared People’s Republic of China, while the opposing Kuomintang Party (KMT), retreated to Taiwan and took control of it (Xin, 2010). During the civil war, the US supported the Kuomintang Party, and started using Taiwan to restrict the power of Mainland China. Even though the US has agreed to the “One-China” policy formally, the Taiwan Strait still is one of the most sensitive and influential factors for Sino-American relations. As an example, in 2017 Trump had a phone call with Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of Taiwan, which raised the tensions between China and the US. Based on the above facts, the research question of this study is structured as:

How does news coverage on Sino-American relations under the Trump presidency differ in Mainland China and Taiwanese media?

Molotch and Lester (1975) claim that news is not a mirror of reality, instead, they are a product of social construction. From an academic perspective, Mainland China’s and Taiwan’s media coverage is a valuable topic for a comparative study, due to the differences and similarities between the two regions. Firstly, Mainland China and Taiwan have many connections, for instance, they both share Chinese language and culture (Dai, 2018). Secondly, Mainland China and Taiwan have developed into two regions with significantly different social systems.

The political system in Mainland China is a one-party state system, which means that the ruling party (CCP) is in full control of it. The party ideology is called Socialism with Chinese characteristics, and is the dominating ideology within the country. The media system in People’s Republic of China was initially regarded as a "media as a mouthpiece" system (Pan & Chan, 2003). After Deng Xiaoping’s economic revolution in 1978, a market-based economy started to emerge in Mainland China, which also started marketization in the media

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industry, and led some media outlets to become more market-oriented (Pan & Chan, 2003). Nevertheless, it should be noted that complete private ownership of media is still not allowed under CCP rule. Moreover, when the current Chinese president Xi Jinping visited the

newsrooms of Xinhua, CCTV, and People’s Daily, he emphasized that media should promote the party’s interest (Wong, 2016).

On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan has adopted a political system with multiple parties and liberal elections. This makes for a more liberal region, but also a more complex media world. In Taiwan, media freedom started being protected by many policies as part of its 1990s’ democratization (Hsu, 2014. p.515). According to the report of Freedom House (2018), media in Taiwan enjoy more freedom than their counterpart in Mainland China.

Taiwanese media has a significant feature called political parallelism. Hallin and Mancini (2014) developed the concept of political parallelism, which indicates to what extent media is related to and influenced by political parties. Taiwanese media have been divided into different groups based on their political stances. Pan-blue media are friendly to the Mainland China government and oppose Taiwanese independence, whereas pan-green media highly support Taiwanese independence (Huang, 2009). These colored media outlets function as the mouthpieces of the mainstream political parties (Kuang, 2011). What makes the

situation even more complex, is that in recent years there have been voices claiming that Mainland China is influencing Taiwanese media through financial means (Hsu, 2014; Huang, 2015: Kuang, 2011).

Considering the fact that a majority of current comparative studies focus on the differences between China and western countries (e.g., James & Boukes, 2017; Yang, 2003), but rarely compare Mainland China and Taiwan, this study attempts to fill this gap in the existing empirical literature. By analyzing media coverage in relation to Trump’s influence

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on Sino-American relations, this study reveals the implications of media’s gatekeeping operations in the two regions. The findings of this study also provide insights into the status quo of the U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, which gives this study high social relevance.

Theoretical Background

This study was structured based on the two levels of agenda-setting theory. The focus of the first level was topic selection, and for the second level, media framing and tone were assessed. The three aspects of media operations were further analyzed based on the

gatekeeping theory.

Gatekeeping Theory and Agenda-setting Theory

Gatekeeping is a classic metaphor for media’s news selection process. After Lewin (1947) proposed the gatekeeping theory in social psychological studies, this theory has been developing for centuries and is widely applied in the political communication field.

Shoemaker (2001) stresses that the concept of gatekeeping can be conceptualized as “the process by which the vast array of potential news messages are winnowed, shaped, and prodded into those few that are actually transmitted by the news media” (p. 233). This definition implies that a gatekeeping process also includes the decisions about how to present events, and not only choosing which events to cover. Researchers have gotten some fruitful results in finding the determinants of gatekeepers’ decision-making (e.g., Clayman & Reisner, 1998; Kepplinger & Ehmig, 2006; Haselmayer, Wagner & Meyer, 2017). Among them, Galtung and Ruge (1965) established a taxonomy of news factors, listing the inherent features of events that make them more likely to be reported on. In the existing research, although the standards for news selection might differ in different regions or media outlets, some news factors, for example negativity, eliteness, novelty, geographical proximity, and so on are repeatedly mentioned by scholars (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017; Shoemaker, 2001). In addition to news factors, other forces behind journalistic gatekeeping should also be taken

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into consideration. As Clayman and Reisner (1998) stressed, a gatekeeping process is

influenced by collaborative factors, and social context plays an important role. For example, a partisan political bias could be viewed as an explanatory variable for media gatekeeping (Haselmayer et al., 2017, p.369).

Lippmann (1922) point out that the “pictures in our heads” are not only the reflection of “the world outside” (p.3), because they have also been determined by the

pseudo-environment established by media. In the famous Chapel Hill study, McCombs and Shaw (1972) found that the decisions of media have an impact on the public agendas. Their following Charlotte study (1977) obtained more empirical findings on media agenda-setting effects, which enabled them to continue developing the agenda-setting theory. The main idea of this theory is that media influences their audience at two levels: tell them “what to think about” and “how to think about” (McCombs, 1992, pp. 820–821). The two levels echo the two parts of gatekeeping practice: what to report, and how to report.

The first level of agenda setting is about the selection of topics for a certain news agenda. MacCombs and Shaw (1993) explain that the second-level agenda-setting is conducted by guiding the audience to pay attention to certain aspects of issues by using different attributes. McCombs (1994) stresses that attributes include both substantive attributes and affective attributes. While the substantive attributes are usually analyzed in terms of media framing, many scholars point out that tone is the affective attribute of objects. Many studies have been conducted to explore the affective attribute in terms of tone, and their findings provide some empirical evidence supporting that the evaluative tone can influence the audience (e.g., Kiousis, Bantimaroudis, & Ban, 1999; Lee & Len-Ríos, 2014; Sheafer, 2007).

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Topic Selection

As addressed before, Sino-American relations are related to many topics. When media select what to report, firstly, some topics about elite individuals, organizations, or institutions, might stand out because they carry the news factor called “eliteness” (Gans, 2004). In the context of this study, examples of news factors that include “Eliteness” could be, The One Belt, One Road initiative proposed by Xi, the Indo-pacific strategy proposed by Trump, the APEC congress, and China’s national congress. Furthermore, because the targeted audience in the selected media for this study is mainly domestic, the geographic proximity might be an important factor that is valued by the gatekeepers. As Wu and Ng (2011) pointed out, the Mainland Chinese media give considerable attention to local development and policies. Meanwhile, they found that along with globalization, Mainland China’s media world is getting a more international focus. When it comes to Taiwanese media, one prevailing concern among scholars is that they are too obsessed with internal issues, but rarely take the international perspective (Bao, 2013).

It is also observed that controversial content and topics are very likely to be ignored by Mainland Chinese media. Huang (2009) found that when reporting Taiwan, Xinhua News agency usually focused on the development of Taiwan, but avoided the relations across the Taiwan straits because of its sensitivity. Whereas, Taiwanese issues are regular news topics in Taiwanese media, especially with a focus on cross-strait relations. Therefore, this study hypothesized that during Trump’s first Asia tour, when reporting Sino-American relations in the Trump Era, the media in Mainland China and Taiwan both highlighted their internal issues. Besides, compared to Taiwanese media, their peers in Mainland China take an international perspective more often. Following are the hypothesis statements.

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H1a: Mainland Chinese media prefer to deal with agendas related to the Mainland Chinese policies more than Taiwanese media.

H1b: Mainland Chinese media prefer to deal with international order agendas more than Taiwanese media.

H1c: Taiwanese media prefer to deal with Taiwanese issues more than Mainland Chinese media.

Speaking of topic selection, it is not rare that Taiwanese media are criticized for reporting too much on side stories of events, and personal stories of politicians (e.g., Bao, 2013; Xie & Liu, 2017, Ma, 2009). Ma (2009) claims that this is a result of having a competitive media field in Taiwan. Taiwanese media tend to personalize political events in order to attract a larger audience, making their content more dramatic and thereby more appealing. This feature of Taiwan media fits Van Santen’s (2012) definition of

personalization, which refers to the trend that media tends to pay too much attention to leaders rather than content contributing positively to society. Jebril, Albæk, and De Vreese (2013) note that personalization is often seen as the presence of infotainment, and this phenomenon has been found in many other democratic regions ((e.g., Machin &

Papatheoderou, 2002; Skovsgaard, 2014). This makes the following hypothesis relevant to explore:

H1d: Taiwanese media prefer to deal with personalized political topics more than Mainland Chinese media.

Framing and Tone

Woo (1996) emphasizes that media frames in news are inevitable. Entman (1993) stresses that “Frame essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text” (p.52). Based on this well-accepted definition, news frame is related to the journalists’ interpretation

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of reality. Many other scholars also agree with that. One example is the definition by Norris (1995) which claims that framing is “an interpretive structure that sets particular events within a broader context” (p.358). Woo (1996) stresses that, media takes advantage of media frames to give meaning to political occurrences, with the purpose to shape the political

environment in accordance with the interests of certain groups. Therefore, even for one single occurrence, different media outlets might develop different stories. Many Scholars have employed the framing perspective in their studies, and it has been proven that media frames can influence the audience’s opinions and even actions (e.g., Levin & Gaeth, 1998; Sheafer & Gabay, 2009).

Schuck and De Vreese (2006) employed the risk frame and the opportunity frame as two frames to study media coverage of EU enlargement in different EU countries. According to their definition, the risk frame emphasizes concerns and negative consequences of an action, while the opportunity frame connects an action to positive results, which raises “hope and confidence” (p. 11). To study how media frame the influence of Trump’s presidency on Sino-American relation, this study borrowed these two frames, and rephrased them as following:

In the context of this study, the risk frame indicates Trump’s presidency has caused conflicts or will potentially have a negative influence on Sino-American relations. On the contrary, the opportunity frame would indicate that Trump’s presidency has positively influenced Sino-American relations or will lead to a bright future between the two countries.

On this level of agenda setting, some interesting differences have been found between media in Mainland China and Taiwan. In 2005, the former Chairman Lien Chan of the KMT visited Beijing, which was called a “journey of peace”. Pan and Qiao’s (2005) study showed that the Mainland Chinese media tended to report it as a sign of a peaceful reunification, and presented a more supportive attitude to the trip than Taiwanese media did. Similarly, Wu and

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Ng’s (2011) studied news reports from CCTV-4 (A Mainland China TV Channel, based in Beijing) and found that they had a tendency to adopt “a harmony-oriented, supportive editorial stance” (p. 85).

In addition to the between-region differences, the features of individual media outlets should also be noted. In China, as Pan and Chan (2003) stress, along with the past economic and political reforms, Mainland Chinese media were experiencing a shift from being party propagandist to having financial autonomy. Professional media and the government’s mouthpiece media were two “competing paradigms” in China (Pan & Chan, 2003, p.671). Market-driven media is inclined to take the former one, while party-owned media has to work as the party’s mouthpiece.

In Taiwan, the political stance of media is described through colors, and this aspect should be taken into consideration. When reporting social conflicts related to Mainland China, Pan-green media, for example, Liberty Times and Apple Daily, show a more radical attitude than pan-blue media (Xie & Liu, 2017). Additionally, Hsu (2014), a Taiwanese scholar, complains that Mainland China is taking advantage of the cross-strait trade to manipulate some media in Taiwan, commercials and censorship from the Chinese authorities has violated the professional principles in Taiwanese media. Hsu (2014) specifically points out China Times as an example of media being influenced by the power in Beijing.

Given the observations from previous studies, this study hypothesized that Mainland China’s media inclines towards “maximize the sphere of consensus”, and “minimize the sphere of controversy” (Sun, 2010, p.56), whereas Taiwanese media included more risks in their coverage. In addition, it was also hypothesized that the two selected Chinese media outlets performed differently on the second level of agenda setting, and so did the two outlets from Taiwan.

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H2a: The opportunity frame plays a more dominating role in Mainland China's media coverage than in Taiwan's media coverage.

H2b: In Taiwan, the opportunity frame plays a more dominating role in news reports from pan-blue media than in those from pan-green media.

H2c: In Mainland China, the opportunity frame plays a more dominating role in news reports from party-owned media than in those from market-driven media.

H3a: The risk frame plays a more dominating role in Taiwan's media coverage than in Mainland China's media coverage.

H3b: The risk frame plays a more dominating role in news reports from pan-green media than in those from pan-blue media.

H3c: The risk frame plays a more dominating role in news reports from than in market-driven media those from party-owned media.

Another attribute at the second level of agenda setting is the tone in news reports, which is also called valence. The utilization of different tones is a way in which journalists express their attitude towards a topic and thereby have an impact on their audience (Brunken, 2006). Scholars generally agree that in journalism, tone is a term which is described by three adjectives: positive, negative or neutral, and this term is applied to present the attitude of the media coverage to subjects or readers (Brunken, 2006; Hopmann, Vliegenthart, De Vreese & Albæk, 2012).

In Mainland China’s journalistic academia, it is often mentioned that negativity is a feature of media’s coverage in Taiwan on Mainland China agendas (Bao, 2013; Lu, 2006; Ma, 2009; Xie & Liu, 2017). Xie and Liu (2017) explain that as a reflection of journalistic professionalism in Taiwan, because journalists in Taiwan believe that they have the

responsibility to criticize and monitor political issues. Lu (2006) takes a different perspective, and she claims that the negativity is also related to Taiwanese media’s intention to harm the

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image of Mainland China. As an example of this, media in Mainland China tend to build an image as peace-lover, but Taiwanese media usually depict China as a threat to western countries（Bao, 2013）.

H4a: Mainland Chinese media coverage generally show a positive tone, whereas Taiwanese media coverage generally has a negative tone.

H4b: In Taiwan, the tone in pan-green media is more negative than in pan-blue media. H4c: In Mainland China, the tone in party-owned media is more positive than in market-driven media.

Method Sample

On November 3, 2017, Trump took off for Hawaii. That was one stop before he visited five Asian countries, and that day is commonly seen as the start of his Asia tour (Treene, 2017). The selected time period of this study is from one week before the first day, to one week after the last day of this tour, namely from October 26, 2017, to November 21, 2017. To explore cross-regional differences in media content, this study chooses a

comparative quantitative content analysis as the research method. Individual news reports are the analysis units of this study, and they were collected via websites of the following media outlets: People’s Daily, The Paper, China Times, and Liberty Times, People’s Daily and The Paper are the representatives of media in Mainland China. Both of them have a reputation for producing quality news. People's Daily is a media outlet of the Chinese governing party-CCP, and it is regarded as the party’s tool for spreading its values and guiding public opinions ("The introduction of People's Daily", n.d.). In this study, People’s Daily refers to its online website. Compared to People’s Daily, The Paper leans more to serve public interests rather than the party’s, although it cannot completely ignore the control of CCP either. On The

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Paper, more controversial content, for example, features reporting corruption in the government, could be found (Tatlow, 2016).

As addressed in the previous part, media in Taiwan are divided into two groups. Liberty Times is one of the most influential pan-green media outlets, and China Times media is an important pan-blue outlet (Hao, 2010). When it comes to the attitude to mainland China, China Times is more unification, whereas Liberty Times is famous for being

pro-independence (Higgins, 2012; Wang, 2017). The diversity of political stances enables this study to get a more comprehensive picture of Taiwan’s media landscape.

Some of the selected media also have English websites, but it is worth noting that only news reports on Chinese websites are included in this study. This is because their Chinese websites are made for the domestic audience and usually contains more varied and deeper content than English websites. When collecting the media coverage, this study used the search string: “Trump China”. To ensure the relationship between Trump and China is the main topic in all sampled articles, only when the two keywords, “Trump” and “China”, both appear at least two times, or appear in the title, will an article be selected. The final sample included 313 articles in total (N= 67 from People’s Daily, N= 78 from The Paper, N= 80 from China Times, N=88 from Liberty Times). Besides, considering that visual and audio content is different from text content, and needs a different analysis method, this study only coded texts in news reports, even if one article also contains materials in other formats, for instance, pictures or videos.

Variables and Intercoder Reliability

Thirty articles, around ten percent of the sampled articles, were selected for the intercoder reliability test. After training, two coders, who are both native Chinese speakers and also fluent in English, independently coded these articles. The Krippendorff’s alpha values for all the variables ranged from 0.669 to 1, which were higher than the “good” or the

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“very good” benchmarks (Gwet, 2014). Further details on the intercoder reliability test will be presented in the following paragraphs.

To investigate media’s selection of topics, articles are coded based on an array of 5 major topic categories and subtopics. When one topic is addressed in news texts, no matter how many times, or in any way, the article was coded as yes regarding this specific topic. All variables in this section got sufficiently high intercoder reliability (Krippendorff’s α >.70). This study measures the two frames based on a modified operation of Schuck and De Vreese (2016). The following dependent variables were checked during the coding process:

(1) Positive (opportunity) or negatives (risk) quotes used to show positive impacts that Trump’s presidency has on Sino-American relations;

(2) Benefits (opportunity) or conflicts (risk) that Trump’s presidency has brought to Sino-American relations;

(3) Positive (opportunity) or negative (risk) evaluations of the status quo in Sino-American relations;

(4) Potential benefits (opportunity) or risks (risk) that Trump’s presidency will bring to Sino-American relations.

As for media framing, coders were asked to record the presence of the 4 factors by binary codes (yes = 1 or no = 0), by doing so, each news story got scores indicating the presence of the two frames. The higher grading a frame gets, the more obvious a frame is in the article. Among all the measurements in this section, positive quotes got the rating “acceptable”, but had the lowest intercoder reliability (α =.669). Similarly, the intercoder reliability for negative quotes was the second lowest (α =.688). This might be because the two measurements are more subjective than the other variables.

Lastly, a 7-point scale from -3 to 3 was given to evaluate the overall tone of articles towards Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency. -3 indicates a significantly

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negative tone, and 3 indicates a significantly positive tone. This variable retained a very good intercoder reliability (α= 0.889).

Findings

After coding, the study employed Mann-Whitney U-tests to examine if the selected media had different preferences regarding topic selection. Additionally, in order to detect frames and tones in news reports, t-tests were used to examine mean differences between Mainland China and Taiwan, as well as media outlets in the same region. All of the tests were

conducted on the SPSS software. Topic selection

This study compared the frequency of media coverage on topics mentioned in the hypotheses. According to hypothesis 1a, media in Mainland China was more likely to

mention agendas closely related to developments in Mainland China, when compared to local Taiwanese media. The figures in Table 1 illustrate that media coverage on those listed

subtopics did account for a higher proportion of news reports in Mainland China than in Taiwan. When it comes to the topic “Sino-American economic and trade relations”, the U-test did not find the gap significant. However, the U-U-test results confirmed that there was a significant difference between the two regions in terms of covering the 19th national Congress and China’s One belt, One road initiative. Therefore, it is safe to say, that when compared with Taiwanese media, media in China pay significantly more attention to most of the topics about their domestic development.

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Table 1

Presence of topics in the media coverage of Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency (% within Media outlets)

Topics Subtopics Mainland

China (N=145） Taiwan (N=168) Sig. (2-tailed) Mainland China’s agendas The 19th national Congress 28.3% 11.9% 0.000***

One belt, one road 11.7% 5.4% 0.042* Sino-American

economic and trade relations

63.4% 54.2% 0.097

International

order North Korea issue 24.8% 38.7% 0.009***

Indo-pacific strategy/Asia-pacific strategy 20.7% 26.8% 0.208 APEC 7.6% 15.5% 0.031* Taiwan

Issues Taiwan issue 7.6% 22.6% 0.000***

Personalization

of politicians Trump's Twitter 7.6% 11.3% 0.265

Trump's granddaughter

11.0% 4.2% 0.020*

Treatment of the Trump family in

Beijing

19.3% 18.5% 0.847

Note.

a) *p-value <.05, **p-value <.02, ***p-value <.0001;

b) One news report might address more than one listed topic, and it is also possible that there are articles not mentioning any of these topics. Therefore, percentages in Table 1 do not add up to 100%.

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As for the international order, the finding does not support hypothesis 1b. Among the 3 listed topics, the “North Korean issue” and “APEC” got more attention from Taiwanese media, rather than from media in Mainland China. The figures for the Taiwan’s media coverage mentioning the two topics are both higher than those for Mainland China’s news, and the U-test results validate the findings to a great degree. Although the topic, “America’s Indo-pacific strategy”, also occurred at a higher percentage of news coverage in Taiwanese media (26.8%) than in Mainland Chinese media (20.7%), this difference is not statistically significant.

In the case of the topic “Taiwan issues”, only 7.6% of Mainland China’s media coverage mentioned it, while it appeared in 22.6% of Taiwan’s media coverage. It is also noteworthy that among all the topics, Taiwanese issues were the least reported topic in Mainland China. Evidently, this was not a normal topic for Mainland China, but quite

popular in Taiwan. This difference (sig. < 0.001) indicates that Hypothesis 1c, which expects that Taiwanese issues would appear in Taiwanese media more often than in Mainland

Chinese media, is strongly supported. However, in the media coverage from Mainland China, Taiwanese issues were mostly mentioned as a term without further analysis or explanation.

As for political personalization, there are three subtopics listed, and hypothesis 1d expects that they will appear more often in Taiwan’s media coverage. Contrary to that, the data in Table 1 reveal that Mainland Chinese media reported about Trump’s granddaughter more frequently than Taiwanese media (sig.=0.020). The two other topics did not get a significantly different level of attention on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Frame

Media frames were tested in terms of their presence in news reports, and the higher score a frame got, the more prominent the frame was. Hypothesis 2a and 3a respectively predict that: media in Mainland China prefer to frame Trump’s administration more as an

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opportunity for Sino-American relations, and Taiwanese media prefer to the adopt the risk frame. The results suggest that, in Mainland China’s media coverage, the mean score of the risk frame was only 0.16 (SD=0.481), which was not only much lower than the figure for their opportunity frame, but also significantly lower than the mean score of the risk frame in Taiwan’s media coverage (M=0.67, SD=1.048). In addition to that, the opportunity frame was more highlighted in Mainland Chinese media coverage (M=1.34, SD=1.056) than in Taiwan’s media coverage (M=0.65, SD=0.935, sig < 0.001). Therefore, hypothesis 2a and 3a are supported, and it becomes reasonable to say that the two regions framed Sino-American relations in different ways.

Table 2

Independent samples t-test of the risk frame and the opportunity frame in the media coverage of Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency (compare regions)

Framing Region N Mean SD SE Mean

Difference Sig. (2-tailed) Opportunity Frame Mainland China 145 1.34 1.056 0.088 0.683 0.000*** Taiwan 168 0.65 0.935 0.072

Risk Frame Mainland China

145 0.16 0.481 0.040

-0.508 0.000*** Taiwan 168 0.67 1.048 0.081

Besides exploring the deviation between regions, this study also compared media outlets in the same regions (See Table 3 and Table 4). In Taiwan, the two media outlets clearly showed a very significant difference in terms of using the opportunity frame. The opportunity frame in China Times coverage (M=0.95, SD=1.078) was more present on average than in Liberty Times (M=0.39, SD=0.685). These results are in line with hypothesis

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2b: China Times, which is pan-blue, is also more willing to adopt the opportunity frame than Liberty Times. However, the opportunity frame did not yield a significant difference between the two Mainland Chinese media outlets, and this indicates that these outlets used the

opportunity frame at the same level. Hypothesis 2c is thus not supported. It is also notable that both of the two media outlets from Mainland China got a higher mean score for using the opportunity frame than their Taiwanese peers.

Table 3

Independently samples t-test of the opportunity frame in the media coverage of Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency (compare media outlets)

Media

outlets N Mean SD SE Sig. (2-tailed) Difference Mean Taiwan China Times 80 0.95 1.078 0.121

0.000*** 0.564 Liberty

Times 88 0.39 0.685 0.073 Mainland

China People's Daily 67 1.48 1.035 0.126 0.139 0.260 The Paper 78 1.22 1.065 0.121

Although hypothesis 3c expects that market-driven media and party-owned media in China would perform differently, in regard to their use of the risk frame, the results in Table 4 do not suggest a significant difference supporting it. More specifically, the risk frame was seldom adopted in both of The Paper and People’s Daily. Interestingly, unlike the opportunity frame, the risk frame did not receive a significant difference in mean value between the two Taiwanese media outlets, which is against hypothesis 3b. Therefore, hypothesis 3b and hypothesis 3c are not supported.

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Table 4

Independent samples t-test of the risk frame in the media coverage of Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency (compare media outlets)

Media outlets N Mean SD SE Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Differenc e Taiwan China Times 80 0.63 1.072 0.12 0.625 -0.080 Liberty Times 88 0.7 1.03 0.11 Mainland

China People's Daily 67 0.09 0.336 0.041 0.097 -0.128 The Paper 78 0.22 0.573 0.065

Tone

Hypothesis 4a expects that Mainland Chinese media and Taiwanese media have different preferences in terms of which tones are adopted towards Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency. As a pre-analysis, this study compared the quantitative account of media's use of tones. It was found that only a small percentage of Mainland China’s media coverage employed negative tones in their reports (see Appendix A). This is especially true when it comes to having a significantly negative tone, since neither People’s Daily nor The Paper adopted it. On the contrary, the two Taiwanese media outlets adopted negative tones comparatively more often, but seldom used a positive tone. Among Liberty Times’ coverage more than half showed negative tones, but no reports adopted a significantly positive tone.

Given the findings above, this study conducted a step further to compare the mean scores of the tones. As expected by hypothesis 4a, the result indicates that Mainland China and Taiwan significantly differ in terms of their tone (sig. <0.001). The average tone in

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Mainland Chinese media was positive (M=1.98, SD=1.156), whereas media in Taiwan presented a much more negative tone (M=-0.58, SD=1.473).

Table 5

Independent Samples T-test of tones in in the media coverage of Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency (compare regions)

Regions N Mean SD SE Sig. (2-tailed) Mean

Difference Mainland

China 139 1.98 1.158 0.098 0.000*** 2.554

Taiwan 132 -0.58 1.473 0.128

Note.

a) Missing data are excluded

b) -3=significantly negative; -2=negative; -1=slightly negative; 0=neutral ;1=Slightly positive; 2=positive, 3=significantly positive

Divergence between the tone of media outlets in the same regions were expected by hypothesis 4b and 4c. Table 6 suggests that, the two media outlets in Taiwan showed a significant difference in their tones, and the overall tone of China Times towards Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency was more positive than that of Liberty Times (sig. < 0.001). The mean score of tone used by China Times was slightly positive (M=0.03, SD=1.414), whereas that figure for Liberty Times was very negative (M=-1.18, SD=1.276). Another finding in Table 6 is that both of the two media outlets in Mainland China generally employed a positive tone, and there was not a significant difference between them. Just as when addressing framing, The Paper and People’s Daily, employed differing tones in a

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consistent way towards Sino-American relations during Trump’s Presidency. Thus, there is no evidence supporting hypothesis 4c.

Table 6

Independent Samples T-test of tones in in the media coverage of Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency (compare media outlets)

Region Media outlets N Mean SD SE Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Differe nce Taiwan China Times 66 0.03 1.414 0.174

0.000*** 1.212 Liberty

Times 66 -1.18 1.276 0.157 Mainland

China The Paper 73 1.84 1.258 0.147 0.123 -0.301 People's

Daily

66 2.14 1.021 0.126

Conclusion and Discussion

This study conducted a content analysis to examine the differences between Mainland Chinese media’s and Taiwanese media’s coverage of Sino-American relations in the Trump era. The collected quantitative evidences reflect media’s features in terms of their

gatekeeping practice, and also indicates some social determinants of media's decisions. Speaking of which topics can be reported, this study suggests that the two regions’ media both showed a tendency to give more attention to their own internal issues or events. China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, and the 19th national congress appeared more frequently in the media outlets in Mainland China, whereas Taiwanese media mentioned Taiwan issues more often. This is in accordance with Wu and Ng’s (2011) finding, and the geographic proximity could be an explanation for the first two topics. However, this news

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factor is not convincing enough to explain the large difference between them in relation to the frequency of reporting Taiwan issues, since the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are historically and geographically close to each other, and these issues have always been an important topic for both of them. As previous researchers have stressed, Taiwanese issues have always been a sensitive topic in Mainland China (Ma, 2009; Pan, 2005). What is more, due to many

disagreements between China and American regarding Taiwanese issues, this topic has made more negative than positive contributions to Sino-American relations. Since social context can influence journalistic gatekeeping (Clayman & Reisner, 1998), this study argues that it makes more sense to also interpret Mainland Chinese media’s choice to ignore this topic as a result of the government’s censorship, or media’s self-censorship behavior which protects them from conflicting with the orientation of the government’s propaganda.

Opposite to the study’s expectation, Taiwanese media did not show more interests in personalizing politics. Firstly, this might be because the listed side stories about Trump in this study were not very related to the internal interests in Taiwan. Secondly, the listed side

stories generally indicate Trump’s positive attitude to his China tour, which could be considered as Mainland China’s diplomacy success and is therefore positive for Mainland China’s image. As Lu’s (2006) study suggests, topics that can benefit the image of Mainland China are usually dismissed by Taiwanese media, for example, the economic and political development. Compared with Taiwanese media, Mainland Chinese media gave more attention to Trump’s granddaughter, who sang a Chinese song and performed a recitation of Chinese poetry to President Xi through a video call. In that media coverage, the

granddaughter was called an “ambassador of Chinese-American friendship”. It seems that these topics were selected to build China’s image of being a peaceful and popular player on the international stage. Moreover, another unexpected finding is that Taiwanese media reported the North Korean issue more often than Mainland Chinese media did. The North

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Korea issues often cause criticism of China and harm China’s international image, because China is always seen as the main supporter of North Korea due to their historical relations and the large volume of trade (Albert, 2018). Therefore, from an image building perspective, it makes sense that this topic was more popular in Taiwanese media. These two unexpected results reinforce the point that not only the nature of topics, but also many social factors are determinants for media’s topic selection (Blumer, 1971).

As for what frames and tones won in the gatekeeping process, this study found that Mainland China and Taiwanese media were significantly divergent. Mainland Chinese media often mentioned that Trump and President Xi had developed a good friendship and claimed that the friendship was a promising sign for future Sino-American relations. However, this statement could hardly be found in Taiwanese media. Besides, the 250-billion-dollar

commercial deals signed during Trump’s China tour were portrayed as a unique opportunity by media in Mainland China, whereas Taiwan’s media argued that most of the deals will not have any real effects. The quantitative evidence also shows that Mainland Chinese media tended to lead their audience to understand Sino-American relations in a more supportive and positive way. This is similar to Wu’s (2016) finding in the study on China’s media

engagement in South Africa, which Wu considers as evidence for media being utilized as an instrument of China’s public diplomacy. In this study, since the domestic audience is the main target, the media’s positive tones and the emphasis on opportunities might be also related to maintaining domestic stability and the government's leadership position. By emphasizing the achievements in diplomacy, the media intended to help the government to gain more support from the public. In turn, the risk frame and media’s negative tone are likely to raise public doubts about the capability of the government, and that might be the reason why they are more likely to fail to pass the gatekeeper. Furthermore, regarding media framing and tone, no noteworthy divergence was found between The Paper and People’s

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Daily. The high level of consistency between them is opposite to the expectation that the market reform of media has brought more diversity to the media landscape. This study, thus argues that the government’s control is still the main factor in Mainland China. Although incoming capital might also have influenced the decisions of media, this study did not find evidence supporting that.

The Taiwanese media showed a more negative direction and presented more risks in terms of Trump’s influence on Sino-American relations. This finding is in agreement with the Taiwan Media’s role as a “watchdog” (Xie & Liu, 2017), which is enabled by press freedom in Taiwan. Speaking of the internal differences in the Taiwanese media world, the negative tones were utilized more in the pan-green outlet, Liberty Times, and the opportunity frame was used more in the pan-blue outlet, China Times. The diversity in Taiwanese media could be seen as a result of a media world with more freedom, but since media’s gatekeeping

operations were consistent with their political stance, the Taiwanese media’s operation should also be interpreted in the context of the current political situation. In the Mainland China-Taiwan-America Triangle, America is an important supporter for Taiwan to confront Mainland China. If Trump intends to develop a better relationship with Beijing, it is very likely that he would make more agreements with Mainland China on cross-strait issues, and one potential result could be that Taiwan loses the support from the US. Therefore, for media who are against the Chinese unification with Taiwan, the frequent use of negative tones revealed their attitude, and the use of the risk frame reflected their expectations of the Trump presidency. As for Hsu’s (2014) accusation that China Times is influenced by financial investments from Mainland China, it might be true, since the results do show that China Times’ agenda-setting strategies were more partial to Mainland China than Liberty Times.

All in all, Mainland China and Taiwan are both shareholders in Sino-American

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when reporting Trump’s influence on the US’s relationship with China. Nevertheless, this study argues that those differences revealed one similarity between them: the existence of a gatekeeping bias. For Mainland China Media, they downplayed sensitive or negative topics and amplified the government's’ achievements. The political direction of their coverage was also higher in accordance with the government’s position. Media seems more like a sphere of consensus under that government’s control and journalists always take the countries

international and national image into consideration (Wu & Ng, 2011). In Taiwan, press freedom does not result in non-biased media coverage. Political parallelism makes the media world become a platform where different parties argue for their opinions (Ma, 2009).

Considering media’s agenda-setting function, media’s gatekeeping strategies are likely to widen the gap between audiences on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and this deserves more attention. Moreover, the polarization of political opinions inside Taiwan should be considered as a potential risk. Therefore, future research could devote more effort to public opinions in the two regions, in order to test the hypothesized agenda-setting effect.

One limitation of this study is that it did not include a comparison from a linear time perspective, therefore the study time period is limited to the one month around Trump’s first Asia trip. If future research can expand the time span or add more events as cases to explore over time changes, more fruitful findings could be expected. For example, during the writing process of this study, a trade war has been ongoing between American and China. This twist might also have influenced all the involved media, and Mainland China’s coverage on Sino-American relations could have become more negatively oriented.

It is notable that all the sampled news reports were retrieved from online media, even though the concept of media is much broader. Future studies can also include more media types, for example TV news, podcasts, or even social media, and therefore present a more comprehensive picture of the media world. This study, just like a majority of content analysis

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studies only focused on text information, and excludes non-text information. Future scholars are expected to fill the void, and their findings with non-text news content are very likely to echo those in this study. Arguably, media in Taiwan might use a considerable number of images containing negative implications, whereas it might be very rare for Mainland Chinese media to use those images. It is even possible that China Times borrows more pictures from Mainland Chinese media, which could be used as the evidence for its connections with Mainland China.

Despite these limitations, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first research comparing Mainland Chinese media and Taiwanese media from the gatekeeping perspective. In this study, the comparison demonstrates features of gatekeeping practice in a censored media system and a highly politically paralleled media system, and therefore provides a more comprehensive understanding of the gatekeeping practice. Journalists in Mainland China and Taiwan feel that they are experiencing the loss of journalistic prestige (Tong & Lo, 2017), and the findings of this study are valuable empirical data to explain that phenomena. The international news agency, Reuters, in its Handbook of Journalism (2008) points out that journalistic journalists should “avoid conflicts of interest or situations that could give rise to a perception of a conflict”. However, the censored gatekeeping and partisan gatekeeping both result in biased political media coverage. In recent years, many scholars have confirmed the existence of gatekeeping bias in other regions as well (e.g., Eberl, Boomgaarden & Wagner, 2015; Haselmayer et al., 2017). This study thus calls for more attention to how media can minimize gatekeeping bias.

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Appendix A

Tones in the media coverage of the Sino-American relations under Trump’s presidency (Percentage)

% within Media outlets

China Times Liberty Times People's Daily The Paper Tone significantly negative 4.50% 18.20% 0 0 negative 7.60% 24.20% 1.50% 1.40% slightly negative 21.20% 27.30% 0 2.70% neutral 34.80% 18.20% 6.10% 16.40% slightly positive 15.20% 12.10% 12.10% 8.20% positive 12.10% 0 36.40% 32.90% significantly positive 4.50% 0 43.90% 38.40% Note.

a) missing data are excluded

b) -3=significantly negative; -2=negative; -1=slightly negative; 0=neutral ;1=Slightly positive; 2=positive, 3=significantly positive

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Appendix B Codebook

Selection Criteria:

The search string: 特朗普/川普（Trump）中国（China） Notes:

● Coders should only code texts in news articles, even if one article also contains materials in other formats, for instance, pictures or videos.

● When one article is published on a media outlet more than once, only the first time shall be coded.

Coder ID： 1=Qiwen

2=Another coder Source:

(a) Mainland China: 1. People’s Daily(PD) 2. The Paper(TP) (b) Taiwan: 3. China Times(CT) 4. Liberty Times(LT) Publication date:_______________ Article Name:_______________ Topic selection:

Note: Below is an extensive list of specific topics, based on an array of 5 major topic

categories and subtopics. When any topic is addressed, no matter how many times, or in any way, the article shall be coded as yes regarding this specific topic.

When any keywords of one topic are mentioned in one article, this article should be coded as yes regarding this topic, or even when no exact words are mentioned in an article, but the topic is addressed indirectly, this article should still be coded as yes. For example, in the sentence "Trump expressed his appreciation on his social media account", "social media" refers to Twitter, therefore this article should be coded as yes regarding Trump's Twitter. Yes = 1

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Major categories Subtopics Yes (1) or no (0)?

Mainland China’s agendas

The 19th national Congress One belt, one road

Sino-American economic and trade relations

International order North Korea issue

Indo-pacific strategy/Asia-pacific strategy

APEC Taiwan Issues Taiwan issue Personalization of politicians Trump's Twitter

Trump's granddaughter Treatment of the Trump family in Beijing

Frame Note:

1.After reading each article, choose if the following frame elements are present or absent. 2.Please read examples given below every question first.

3.All the tenses (future, present, past)below, are based on the time the articles are written. Opportunity Frame:

1. In this article, are there quotes used to show positive impacts that Trump’s presidency has on Sino-American relations?

Yes=1 No=0 Note:

● Quotes do not count here ● Examples：

I. South China Morning Post---“The US president’s embrace of Xi Jinping’s welcome in Beijing reflects a personal warmth sorely missing in bilateral ties, bringing hope for more substantive cooperation to come.”

2. In this article, are benefits that Trump’s presidency has brought to Sino-American relations addressed? (Past tense）

Yes=1 No=0 Note: