Same Events,Different Stories

Abstract

One hundred and eight newspaper accounts of events of the Arab Spring were analyzed in an attempt to define how the events and the accompanying Internet censorship were framed in the news coverage in mainland China compared with that in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The newspapers in all three media markets were found to have constructed their coverage within the ideological boundaries prevailing in their respective markets. This resulted in differing news stories about the same event or the same issue. News framing was analyzed in terms of news perspective and favorability toward the protesters or the government. Framing of Internet censorship reporting was also analyzed. The results show significant differences in coverage among the three markets. The frames employed in the coverage are interpreted in terms of the markets’ ideological differences and differences in press freedom. The reasons for these differences and theoretical implications are explored.

Keywords

Internet censorship Arab Spring news framing protests China Hong Kong Taiwan

Introduction

The Arab Spring, which evolved from an uprising in Tunisia that began on December 18, 2010, and swept across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the following months and years, resulted in the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in several countries and the shaking of many more, and is regarded as one of the most significant events of the new millennium. The Internet, especially the new emerging social media, played an unprecedented role in the uprisings, and was met with an equally unprecedented level of censorship from the authorities. These seemingly remote events have significant relevance for Greater China. With the lingering memory of the Beijing Spring of 1989 and the ensuing bloodshed,¹ and with the Chinese government and citizens currently experiencing a situation similar to that in Egypt and its neighboring countries, the news media of Greater China closely monitored the revolutionary wave within the Arab world.

Greater China and the Arab Spring thus provide a unique context for studying news framing. Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are in close geographic and cultural proximity but are in stark ideological contrast. They have a not free, a partly free, and a free media system, respectively. In reporting on the Arab Spring and the accompanying Internet censorship, the news media in each region constructed its coverage within the region’s own ideological boundaries, which seems to have resulted in differing news stories about the same event or the same issue.

This study compares the three regions’ news coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings and the accompanying censorship of the Internet, and examines the frames imposed on the coverage. Framing is analyzed in terms of overall news perspective, favorability toward the protesters or the government, and attribution of responsibility in general. Information censorship issues such as obstacles to information access, limits on content, violations of user rights, and so on are a particular focus. The frames employed in the coverage are interpreted in light of the differences in ideological orientation and press freedom in the three jurisdictions. The reasons for the observed differences and their theoretical implications are explored.

This study differs from previous framing analyses of issues covered differently by different media outlets. These studies tended to examine media coverage of issues or events where there are direct conflicts of interest between the contrasting countries or regions where the particular media outlets are based: for example, comparing American and Chinese media coverage of President Hu Jintao’s visit to the United States, or comparing mainland Chinese and Hong Kong media coverage of the 1997 Hong Kong Handover. In such cases, it is almost certain that the coverage will be framed differently. Whereas studies comparing how different countries’ media frame and present the same story have been done before, this study is novel and unique in that it assesses the phenomenon of news framing by examining how three Chinese-speaking regions with close geographical and cultural proximity deal with a series of events that are culturally and politically distant and unfamiliar to their general publics. It can therefore shed important light on media framing in three different clusters of media markets where we can to some extent hold some of the confounding variables such as culture or historical background constant.

Literature Review

News Framing Theory and Research

News framing

A picture-frame metaphor can be used to explain news framing: A news frame is like a picture frame that includes selected slices of reality but excludes the unselected (Tuchman, 1978). Ghanem (1997) described a news frame as the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration. Eventually, the frame, or perspectives, that journalists employ draws attention to certain attributes of the objects of news coverage and influence how people understand, remember, evaluate, and act upon a problem or issue (Brewer, Graf, & Willnat, 2003; McCombs, 2005; Perlmutter, 2007; Wanta, Golan, & Lee, 2004; Weaver, 2007). As a theory of media effects, framing came into maturation with the publications highlighted by Entman’s (1991, 1993) and Entman and Rojecki’s (1993) works on framing, Scheufele’s (1999) clarification of the process model of framing, and Borah’s (2011) systematic examination of conceptual issues in framing theory. For journalism studies, probably the most useful and widely cited definition of framing is from Entman (1993), who argues that news framing essentially involves selection and salience—to frame is to select certain aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient; this is conducted in a manner that highlights a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the pertinent item. Entman (1991) suggested that comparing media narratives of events that could have been reported similarly helps to unveil critical textual choices that framed the story but would otherwise remain submerged in an undifferentiated text.

Ideology as a source of news framing

Although news media and news practitioners are supposed to be and profess to be objective, neutral, and impartial, they do not operate in a social, political, or ideological vacuum. No news-gathering and reporting system is fundamentally non-ideological, apolitical, or non-partisan, so differences in news coverage are to be expected (McQuail, 1992). Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad (1998) have observed that one of the few certainties produced by six decades of research in mass communication is the dictum that news is a socially constructed product, not a reflection of objective reality. According to Tuchman (1978), news frames often are based not on individuals’ internal values, but rather on external values such as social norms, organizational constraints, and interest-group pressures. Likewise, Merrill and Odell (1983) contended that journalists adapt to what they perceive to be the social good at the expense of their professional conscience and responsibility.

In their attempt to identify the causes of framing, Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad (1998) have argued that ideology is a major source, and further that framing is a necessary mechanism by which ideology is transmitted through the news. They studied framing in the U.S. and Chinese news coverage of the Fourth United Nations (UN) Conference on Women and the Non-Governmental Organizations Forum in Beijing in 1995. They observed that the coverage in both countries clearly reflected that country’s dominant ideology (the views and ideas shared by the majority of people in that society), its elite ideology (the ideology or policy orientation of the administration in power), and its journalistic ideology (arising mainly from media routines and occupational values). All were important influences on the framing of the news. Their findings point to a prominent role of ideology in determining the framing of international news. In news work, and in the case of international news coverage in particular, a nation’s dominant ideology (capitalist or communist, for example) appears to function as a major source of framing.

Same protests, different stories

Both Entman (1993) and Lasorsa (1997) have demonstrated how, through framing, media can differ even when presenting the same story or issue. When it comes to anti-government protests, ideological influence can be particularly evident. Depending on the operant ideological boundaries, a protest event can be framed as deviant and characterized by violence and vandalism, or as a social movement striving for justice and democracy. It can be framed as a conflict between a government and its opponents, or just an incidental standoff between the protesters and the police force. The contrasting American and Chinese media coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen protests in Beijing provides a pertinent example. Friedland and Zhong (1996) observed that U.S. media portrayed the student protests as pro-democracy and pro-revolutionary, whereas Chinese media called them “counter-revolutionary turmoil.” Similarly, Kobland, Du, and Kwon (1992) examined the New York Times’ coverage of student uprisings and governmental reprisals in China and South Korea in the 1980s. They found that the demonstrations in Communist China were portrayed so as to emphasize the troubles facing dictatorial communist regimes, whereas the reporting on those in pro-Western South Korea focused on the demonstrations themselves rather than any wider implications for the country’s similarly repressive government. More recently, Zhang and Fahmy’s (2009) comparative analysis of U.S. and Russian newspaper coverage of political movements in Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan (former Soviet republics) revealed a clear pro-movement pattern in the New York Times but a pro-incumbent one in the Moscow Times: the U.S. newspaper depicted the protesters favorably, whereas the Russian newspaper treated protesters in an unfavorable manner. Du and Cheng (2013) examined media coverage of the Egyptian Revolution and found that it was framed in different ways in newspapers of different ideological backgrounds, giving contrasting depictions of the protesters.

Common news frames identified in past research

Previous studies have identified a number of frames that usually exist in news coverage of political struggles: general news perspective, attribution of responsibility, protester behavior, and government action (Du & Cheng, 2013; Kobland et al., 1992; Neuman, Just, & Crigler, 1992; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). In this study, the key variables were designed in light of this line of past research to reflect on such frames via a combination of inductive and deductive approaches.

Ideologies of Press Control in Greater China

International communications scholars are often struck by how differently journalism is practiced in different parts of the world (Hachten & Scotton, 2002, 2007; Stevenson, 1994). As such, they construct “major dimensions” or “normative concepts” of press systems to highlight the special features and to help distinguish the underlying elements among them (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Political parallelism, the degree and nature of the links between the media and political parties, and the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system has been one major dimension according to which media systems are compared (Seymour-Ure, 1974). Along with this dimension, a series of media concepts has been further developed to reflect the varied ideologies of press control worldwide (Hachten & Scotton, 2007). According to Hachten and Scotton (2007), there are five different country-level media systems. The Western concept values the right of the press to report on, comment on, and criticize the government without retaliation. Such media systems are exemplified in Western nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Spain, and France, among others. Another media system concept is communist, in which the press is believed to serve the positive social function of socialization to desired norms. Communist media transmit official views and policies, mobilize support for nation building, and serve the ruling party but not the public. Examples of such press systems can be found in Cuba, North Korea, China, Laos, and Vietnam (Hachten & Scotton, 2007).²

It is widely known that the mass media in mainland China are under strict ideological control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The media have been used as part of the state’s ideological apparatus and as the mouthpiece of the central government for “command communication” (Wu, 1994). Although economic reforms since the late 1970s have motivated the mass media to steer themselves more toward the interests of their audience to maximize advertising revenue, the CCP and the government continue to insist that the media, including both party-owned media and those based on mass appeal, continue to operate under strict ideological controls (Cheung, 2003). Wu (2000) has observed that the larger journalistic space that has resulted from socioeconomic liberalization in China has been offered to Chinese journalists only in the social realm, but not yet in the political realm.

Hong Kong enjoys greater press freedom, as the city was deeply influenced by British colonial governance and tradition, and has embraced capitalism and developed a mature market economy where the free flow of information is highly valued. Although Hong Kong is now under the rule of Communist China, a policy of “one country, two systems” was designed to ensure the autonomy of this Special Administrative Region (SAR). Under that political framework, the press is supposed to be able to continue operating within the Western normative concept, facilitating the flow of information. In practice, however, freedom to apply the Western normative concept also implies freedom to apply the communist one, and there have been growing concerns about media owners and journalists in Hong Kong choosing to impose self-censorship (Cheung, 2003). In fact, Hong Kong now has what Freedom House (2014) termed a “partly free” press.³

Taiwan’s media environment is the freest among the three Greater China regions studied, and it is considered freer than most countries in Asia (Freedom House, 2014). Freedom of speech and the press are safeguarded by the constitution, under which the press can monitor government policies and official conduct without undue restraint. According to Freedom House, Taiwan currently has a free press. It was ranked 47th in 2014 in terms of press freedom among 197 countries around the world (Freedom House, 2014).

Internet Censorship in China

With Communist China’s established ideological control of traditional media, the Internet has become the most accessible source of alternative political views for China’s public, posing a major threat to the regime (Guo & Feng, 2012). As the number of Internet users continues to grow in China, popular social media platforms have become increasingly powerful in leading public opinion. For example, Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging service in China, has become an effective tool for unveiling social injustice and exposing corrupt governance and governors. These exposés have undermined the credibility of the government and aggravated domestic tension. As such, the Chinese government has employed tight measures of regulation while building perhaps the most sophisticated Internet censorship tool in the world—the “Great Firewall.” Recently, a new law has been enforced that requires Internet companies operating inside China to use a combination of computer algorithms as well as human editors to identify objectionable material and remove it from the Internet, and to collect the real identities of users (Hille, 2013; MacKinnon, 2012).

The Arab Spring and Internet Censorship

The Arab Spring swept across the MENA and has thus far involved the overthrow of long-serving authoritarian rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Internet-based communication tools showed the world their unprecedented power in connection with the Arab Spring. According to a March 2011 report, nearly 90% of Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed said they used Facebook to organize protests or spread awareness about them (Huang, 2013). The number of Egyptians using Facebook increased by 30% during the 2011 revolution, and tweets about political change in Egypt ballooned from 2,500 a day to 230,000 a day (Cambie, 2012). In a word, social media have played a central role in shaping the political debates in these revolutions. Governments threatened in the movements adopted a variety of harsh measures intended to obstruct Internet use. For instance, the Egyptian government at one point cut off Internet access and closed down mobile telephone networks for several days.

The Arab Spring reminded those in Greater China of the Beijing Spring of 1989 and its ensuing bloodshed. Mainland China is also characterized by problems similar to those in MENA, such as dictatorship, the widening gap between rich and poor, and corruption. It is thus no surprise that the Communist government is highly sensitive about the seemingly remote Arab unrest and its accompanying Internet censorship issues. In January 2011, when the Egyptian government shut down the Internet, the Chinese government extended its existing censorship and surveillance mechanisms; in March 2011, the central government established a new overarching agency responsible for controlling all Internet platforms and services, resulting in a dramatically expanded number of censored foreign websites and social networking platforms, and upgraded surveillance systems to more aggressively track down Chinese netizens who managed to circumvent the blockages (MacKinnon, 2012).

Research Question and Hypothesis

Based on previous research, this study was launched in an attempt to answer the following research question:

RQ1: How is Internet censorship in the Arab Spring framed in the news coverage in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, respectively?

The study was designed to test a general hypothesis: The frames applied by news media in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan during their coverage of Internet censorship in the Arab Spring correspond in each case with their respective prevailing degrees of constraint (due to differing ideologies).

Specifically,

H1: Mainland China’s coverage is more likely than that of the other two regions to

adopt a news perspective in favor of the government’s viewpoint,

frame the government action as reconciliation instead of suppression, and

frame the protester behavior as violent.

H2: Mainland China’s coverage is

less likely than that of the other two regions to mention Internet censorship during the revolutions, and

where Internet censorship is mentioned, more likely to obscure the details, such as obstacles to access, limits on content, violations of user rights, and anti-censorship actions.

Method

Sampling and Data Sources

It is commonly agreed that the Arab Spring began on December 18, 2010, when mass demonstrations began in Tunisia. Since then, the movement has spread to numerous countries and unrest continues even today. To stay focused, this study concentrated on the four countries in which the largest scale protests took place, resulting in the eventual overthrow of their authoritarian regimes. For the purposes of this study, the time periods were defined as follows: the Tunisian revolt was considered as lasting from December 18, 2010, to January 21, 2011, 1 week after the fall of President Zine el Abidine ben Ali to allow for reflection on the aftermath in the media; the Egyptian revolution was defined as beginning with the mass protests on January 25, 2011, and lasting until February 18, 1 week after President Hosni Mubarak stepped down; the Libyan civil war was defined as beginning on January 14, 2011, when mass protests began, and lasting until to August 30, 2011, 1 week after the death of Brother Leader Muammar Gaddafi; and Yemen’s revolution was taken as having begun on January 27, 2011, when mass protests began, and lasting until March 5, 2012, 1 week after President Ali Abdullah Saleh resigned.

Media content was sampled using the WiseNews database. WiseNews is especially designed for academic research, and it is commonly agreed among researchers on Chinese media to be the database that best archives Greater China Chinese-language news publications. Its newspaper sources are the most systematic and complete, so newspaper content was the focus of this study. All Chinese-language newspapers published in the three jurisdictions available in the WiseNews database were included in the sample. As a result, in total, 39 newspapers were examined, including 19 from mainland China, 13 from Hong Kong, and 7 from Taiwan.

In the WiseNews searches, the keywords “block” (封鎖), “censorship” (監控), and “Internet” (互聯網, 網絡, 網際網路) in combination with the names of the four countries (Egypt = 埃及, Libya = 利比亞, Tunisia = 突尼斯, Yemen = 葉門) were used to search “in headline” during the corresponding time periods. This resulted in 186, 10, 165, and 128 news stories for Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, respectively. After a one-by-one manual screening process to eliminate irrelevant items,⁴ the final sample for analysis included 12, 6, 89, and 1 news stories for the four countries. Twenty-two of the stories retained were from mainland Chinese newspapers, 69 from Hong Kong, and 17 from Taiwan.⁵

Variable Operationalization

The unit of analysis was a single news story. The framing analysis involved 12 key variables derived from previous research in combination with what was observed and identified from original pilot data—that is, via both deductive and inductive approaches. These variables, some of which composite,⁶ are based on the 33-question coding sheet that consists of two sections: The General section was designed to measure the overall frames used in reporting the protests and demonstrations in the Arab Spring. The Censorship section specifically measured the frames involving Internet censorship. The General variables were established in light of the work of Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), Kobland et al. (1992), and Neuman et al. (1992). The Censorship variables were developed based on Freedom House’s (2012) research on Internet freedom around the world. According to Freedom House, obstacles to access, for example, include infrastructure and economic barriers to access as well as government efforts to block specific applications or technologies. Limits on content refer to filtering and blocking of websites or manipulation of content. Violations of user rights are considered to include surveillance, limits on privacy and repercussions such as prosecution, imprisonment, physical attacks, or other forms of harassment in response to online activity.

Among the 12 key variables, 3 were evaluated using interval-level measurements: news perspective was quantified using a 7-point scale from anti-protester to anti-government; press descriptions of government action were quantified using a 5-point scale from peaceful conciliation to violent suppression; descriptions of protester behavior were assessed using a 3-point scale from negative to positive. The other 9 key variables—economic consequences, attribution of responsibility, human interest, and conflict in the General section; and obstacles to access, limits on content, violations of user rights, influence of the Internet on the Arab Spring, and anti-censorship in the Censorship section—were ratio-level composite variables, each of which was quantified as the sum of the coding results from a group of dichotomous questions (e.g., is there a mention that the government uses control over Internet infrastructure to limit connectivity? yes = 1 and no = 0; also see Note 6).

In addition to these 12 quantitative variables, a qualitative variable, frame keywords, was also included in the coding process to supplement the quantitative analyses.

Coding and Inter-Coder Reliability

A coding training session was conducted before the formal coding process set out. This included a pilot test of inter-coder reliability using 10% of the sample. Coding rules and specific criteria were discussed and agreed upon between the two coders, who were postgraduate students of communication fluent in both Chinese and English. A “luxury” approach to coding was carried out to maximize the validity and reliability of the data, that is, both coders coded the whole sample. After the coding process was completed for the entire sample of 108 stories, inter-coder reliability was calculated for each variable using Scott’s pi: The highest reliability was 1 and the lowest .84 (.93 on average for the 33 items). With such satisfactory inter-coder reliability, the means of the coding results from the two coders for each variable were then calculated to form the final data set for analysis.

Data Analysis

The coding results were analyzed using the SPSS software package. Data transformation was performed where necessary to form the composite variables. ANOVA and post hoc tests were used to detect significant differences in framing.

Results

Table 1 presents the ANOVA results. They show that in framing their accounts of the protests and demonstrations in the Arab Spring in general, publications in the three regions adopted significantly different overall news perspectives (F = 16.50, p < .001), described government actions (F = 20.86, p < .001) and protester behavior (F = 18.45, p < .001) differently, and made significantly different attritions of responsibility (F = 4.69, p < .01).

Table 1.

Differences in General.

Region	News perspective	Government actions	Protester behavior	Economic	Responsibility	Human	Conflict
Region	M	M	M	M	M	M	M
Mainland China (n = 22)	4.00	2.82	1.84	.3	1.34	1.5	1.59
Hong Kong (n = 69)	5.38	4.21	2.60	.26	.84	1.28	1.29
Taiwan (n = 17)	5.50	3.92	2.50	.18	1.27	1.68	1.70
	F = 16.50	F = 20.86	F = 18.45	F = 0.18	F = 4.69	F = 1.59	F = 2.07
	p < .001	p < .001	p < .001	p = .83	p < .01	p = .20	p = .13

Tukey’s honest significant difference (HSD) post hoc test was used to detect which differences were actually significant (see Table 2). In terms of news perspective, there are significant differences between coverage from mainland China (M = 4.00) and from Hong Kong (M = 5.00, p < .001), and between China and Taiwan (M = 5.21, p < .001), but the difference between Hong Kong and Taiwan coverage was not significant. This result indicates that whereas newspapers in Hong Kong and Taiwan tend to take the protesters’ side, those in mainland China seem to be reluctant to do so, as they tend to adopt a relatively neutral perspective by considering the government’s viewpoint.

Table 2.

Post Hoc Test for Differences in General.

Region	News perspective	Government actions	Protester behavior	Economic	Responsibility	Human	Conflict

	Tukey’s HSD significance
Mainland China and Hong Kong	p < .001	p < .001	p < .001	p = .97	p = .02	p = .57	p = .35
Mainland China and Taiwan	p < .001	p < .001	p < .001	p = .87	p = .95	p = .82	p = .91
Hong Kong and Taiwan	p = .92	p = .52	p = .80	p = .83	p = .02	p = .23	p = .19

Note. HSD = honest significant difference.

With regard to the framing of reports of government actions, the post hoc test results again show significant differences between mainland China (M = 2.82) and Hong Kong reports (M = 4.21, p < .001) and between mainland China and Taiwan (M = 3.97, p = .001), but not between Hong Kong and Taiwan. The data in Table 1 indicate that the government actions in the Arab Spring uprisings were generally framed as conciliatory in mainland China newspapers, whereas the same actions were largely framed as suppressive or violently suppressive in Hong Kong and Taiwan reports.

As for framing of protester behavior, the results again indicate the same pattern, with significant differences between mainland China (M = 1.84) and Hong Kong (M = 2.60, p < .001) and between China and Taiwan (M = 2.50, p = .001), but not between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Protesters’ behavior was framed as violent in mainland China news coverage, whereas it was framed as pro-democratic and reasonable in Hong Kong and Taiwan newspapers.

For framing of attribution of responsibility, the results suggest significant differences between Hong Kong (M = .84) and mainland China (M = 1.34, p < .05) coverage, and between Hong Kong and Taiwan (M = 1.27, p < .05). In this case, however, no significant difference was found between mainland China and Taiwan. This means newspapers in China and Taiwan are more likely to use attribution-of-responsibility framing than those in Hong Kong.

In framing of Internet censorship issues in the Arab Spring in particular, ANOVA revealed significant differences in the variables obstacles to access (F = 3.26, p < .05), Internet influence on the Arab Spring (F = 4.67, p < .01), and anti-censorship (F = 3.60, p < .05) among newspapers in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (see Table 3).

Table 3.

Differences in Internet Censorship.

Region	Obstacles to access	Limits on content	Violation of user rights	Influence of Internet on Arab Spring	Anti-censorship
Region	M	M	M	M	M
Mainland China (n = 22)	1.96	1.07	.05	.69	.09
Hong Kong (n = 69)	2.54	1.12	.26	1.22	.59
Taiwan (n = 17)	2.4	1.09	.24	1	.41
	F = 3.26	F = .03	F = 1.40	F = 4.67	F = 3.60
	p < .05	p = .96	p = .25	p < .01	p < .05

Post hoc tests revealed a significant difference in uses of the obstacles-to-access frame between mainland China (M = 1.96) and Hong Kong (M = 2.54, p < .05). It appears that Hong Kong newspapers are more likely to report Internet access issues than those from mainland China. Taiwan media stand in between Hong Kong and the mainland, with no significant difference from either. As for the Internet influence on the Arab Spring and anti-censorship frames, the post hoc test results indicate significant differences between mainland China (M = .69; M = .09) and Hong Kong (M = 1.22, p < .001; M = .59, p < .05). Compared with mainland papers, those in Hong Kong are much more likely to report and tend to be more radical in evaluating how the Internet facilitated the Arab Spring uprisings and how the public fought against Internet censorship. Although the Taiwan papers seem to have reported such issues more frequently than those from mainland China, the difference was not as great as that between mainland China and Hong Kong. Compared with their Hong Kong counterparts, Taiwan papers were relatively moderate in their reporting on censorship issues, whereas mainland papers tended to avoid mentioning these issues altogether, presumably because they are deemed extremely sensitive by the Communist Party (see Table 4).

Table 4.

Post Hoc Test for Differences in Internet Censorship.

Region	Obstacles to access	Limits on content	Violation of user rights	Influence of Internet on Arab Spring	Anti-censorship

	Tukey’s HSD significance
Mainland China and Hong Kong	p < .05	p = .97	p = .22	p < .001	p < .05
Mainland China and Taiwan	p = .33	p = .99	p = .55	p = .37	p = .39
Hong Kong and Taiwan	p = .85	p = .99	p = .96	p = .51	p = .67

Note. HSD = honest significant difference.

To supplement these quantitative findings, the qualitative frame keywords variable was analyzed to establish patterns of categories via categorical aggregation. Combining the quantitative and qualitative results, Tables 5 and 6 present a summary of the findings.

Table 5.

General Frames Adopted by Newspapers in the Three Regions.

Frames	China	Hong Kong	Taiwan
News Perspective	More coverage of official government statements	More coverage of opposition statements
Government Action	Restoration of peace and stability	Ruthless suppression
Protesters’ Behavior	Violence, robbery, vandalism	Protesting for democracy
Responsibility	Government has the ability to alleviate the problem; government has some responsibility for the issues	Government has responsibility for the issues	Government has responsibility for the issues; constructive solutions suggested

Table 6.

Internet Censorship Frames Adopted by Newspapers in the Three Regions.

Frames	China	Taiwan	Hong Kong
Obstacles to Access	Some coverage of obstacles to Internet access, mentioned as Internet breakdown rather than shutting down by the government	More frequent coverage of government cutting off Internet access and mobile networks	Most frequent in reporting government shutting down of the Internet and mobile networks
Influence of the Internet on the Arab Spring	Little coverage of how the Internet facilitates the Arab Spring	Frequent coverage of how people use Facebook and Twitter to organize demonstrations	Frequent mentions of how people use the Internet to organize demonstrations
Anti-censorship	Very little coverage of this issue	Moderate coverage of this issue	Most likely to report in detail how people fight against Internet censorship

Discussion

Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have contrasting ideological controls amounting to not free, partly free, and free press systems. The results of this study support the general hypothesis that newspapers in the three jurisdictions applied different frames in their coverage of the Arab Spring and the related Internet censorship issues. The constraints of communist ideology led newspapers in mainland China to adopt frames distinct from those applied in the other two regions, especially Hong Kong, in covering the Arab Spring.

These findings suggest that mainland Chinese media chose not to take a news perspective that is favorable toward the uprisings in the Arab Spring, in other words, remained neutral, whereas those in Hong Kong and Taiwan were more in favor of the protesters (see Table 5). In the mainland China newspapers, more coverage was given to the official statements of the governments that solicited the restoration of peace and stability during the incidents. For example, a speech by Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, about the government’s efforts to resolve unemployment, poverty, high prices, and low living standards was frequently quoted. The coverage in mainland China tended to attribute the social instability in the affected countries to social and economic problems rather than to political dictatorship and tyranny. The newspapers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, in contrast, took the side of the protesters who challenged the dictatorial leaderships and corrupt governments. For instance, in their reporting on the revolt in Egypt, more attention was paid to the pro-democratic and anti-government statements of Mohamed El Baradei, a leader of the opposition camp; in reporting the Libyan civil war, the turmoil and upheavals were often ascribed to the country’s tyrannical and peculiar leader and his corrupt government.

The three regions’ news media also framed in different ways the actions of the governments of the four countries and those of the protesters. In mainland China’s newspapers, the governments’ official statements were frequently quoted. Whereas the protesters’ actions were usually depicted as illegal behavior, robbery, vandalism, violence, attack, and arson, the governments’ actions were depicted as restoration of peace and stability, dialogue with youth, and the promise of political reform. Moreover, the responses of the police were typically described as necessary measures to maintain social order. Conversely, the Hong Kong and Taiwan newspapers took an opposite stance, describing the governments’ actions as ruthless suppression with bloodshed, bullying protesters [to death], and killing. The protesters’ behavior was portrayed in those newspapers as protesting for democracy and a determination to overthrow dictatorial sovereignty. More coverage of how protesters were brutally ill-treated was observed in Hong Kong and Taiwan newspapers, indicating empathy for the protesters.

The Internet has played a crucial role in the Arab Spring. Despite the tight regulation of Internet connection providers, especially the blocking and filtering software heavily employed in the countries subject to uprising, digitally literate Arabs were able to bypass these constraints and use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to mobilize demonstrators at home and communicate with the outside world, for example, by sending video coverage to foreign news media. However, in their reporting on the Arab Spring, mainland Chinese newspapers rarely mentioned the role of the Internet and social media. This is not surprising given that autocratic China itself has the world’s most sophisticated online control regime. To Communist China’s party-controlled media, any mention of Internet censorship, particularly at a time of anti-government upheavals, would naturally be extremely sensitive, if not taboo. In contrast, newspapers in the freer media environments of Hong Kong and Taiwan tended to report in detail how people in the uprisings used the Internet and other new media tools to communicate among themselves and to disseminate information to the outside world. Hong Kong and Taiwan newspapers frequently mentioned that the governments shut down Internet access to prevent protesters from organizing demonstrations on a larger scale. Rather than specifying that it was the governments who cut off the communication networks, the reporting in mainland Chinese newspapers tended to use the passive voice to avoid mentioning the agent responsible. The reports often made it sound as if the networks were spontaneously interrupted by technical breakdowns. Hong Kong and Taiwan papers also frequently reported in detail on the measures protesters took to circumvent censorship and regain access to social networking sites (reporting, for example, the service provided by Google that allowed Egyptians to use Twitter via traditional telephones). Such information was almost completely absent from the newspaper coverage in mainland China (see Table 6).

Journalism scholars have long contended that news is more than just a vehicle to disseminate facts about events; it is also a source through which ideology is conveyed (Kobland et al., 1992). The results of this study further buttress this view by uncovering the framing of remote political events by the news media of three geographically proximate regions with contrasting press systems. The results are also consistent with those of previous studies in confirming that a particular framing may be made salient not only in press systems where the state imposes strict authoritarian control, but also in systems where press freedom is highly valued (Kobland et al., 1992).

Media everywhere promote the interests of their owners, but in most markets, the owners have divergent interests, resulting in a variety of coverage. The media in mainland China (and even some in Hong Kong) are, in contrast, acknowledged as propaganda vehicles promulgating the ideology of the Communist Party and maintaining its control by promoting stability and harmony. No divergent viewpoints are represented. This was evident in the coverage of the demonstrations in the Arab Spring countries. News framing was applied in all the markets studied, but only in mainland China did the news framing emphasize the efforts of the threatened governments to restore social stability. In this framing, those involved in the protests were deemed the cause of the chaos that upset the harmony of society, and thus were framed as troublemakers.

Mainland China is unique in having a large number of Internet users and high Internet activism combined with high levels of Internet regulation. The Chinese government not only filters and controls content generated by domestic Internet users, it also blocks users from accessing external Internet sources that are deemed “inappropriate.” Frequent efforts at control, additional regulations, and police crackdowns on cyber-dissidents are nevertheless often accompanied by anti-censorship protests. Because China imposes strict regulations and heavy censorship on the Internet, Internet censorship and anti-censorship efforts in the Arab Spring were an extremely sensitive and provocative topic that few domestic media would take the risk of reporting. More importantly, given the role it has played in shaking and overthrowing the authoritarian regimes in the Arab Spring, the Internet is now deemed a potential threat to Communist authority. Mainland China media thus chose (or probably were instructed) to avoid touching Internet-related issues, despite the fact that what was going on was highly relevant and valuable news by any standard.

Interestingly, the data show that Hong Kong newspapers put more emphasis on Internet censorship issues than their Taiwan counterparts. Although Hong Kong currently has a “partly free” press system, self-censorship is observed mostly in traditional print and broadcast media. The Internet in Hong Kong is still free with little censorship or constraints. Having witnessed a decline in press freedom in recent years, the highlighting of Internet censorship and anti-censorship efforts in the Arab Spring by Hong Kong media may have reflected reporters’ anxieties about future explicit regulation and censorship from China’s central government.

In summary, the news framing observed in the newspaper coverage of the Arab Spring is not at all surprising considering the respective ideological backgrounds of the newspapers involved. Many stories analyzed in this study were contentious and touched on the differing interests and ideologies of the three media markets. Defensive, biased, framed news coverage can be naturally expected in such situations, especially when the political and historical background is taken into account. These conclusions resonate with Entman’s (1993) overall observation on the news framing process. By selecting some aspects of a perceived reality in the Arab Spring and making them more salient, the three regions’ newspapers employed different news frames congruent with their various ideological constraints. The resulting coverage promoted a particular problem definition, certain causal interpretations, and even moral evaluation of the protesters, the demonstrations, the governments’ actions, the Internet censorship, and the revolutions as a whole.

The Arab Spring and the accompanying Internet censorship provided an extraordinary context for studying news framing as they embrace an anti-establishment element, which is valued and sensitized to varying degrees among different ideologies. The Greater China area, with mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan each having a not free, a partly free, and a free media system, respectively, is a unique platform for news framing analysis in the context of Arab Spring, as their media are linguistically, culturally, and geographically proximate but are in stark ideological contrast. Whereas much framing research has been done before to compare how an issue is framed differently by different countries’ media, previous studies tended to examine issues or events where there are direct conflicts of interest at either end of the contrasting parties. In such cases, the contaminating factors such as cultural and geopolitical interests are not ruled out. A major contribution of this study is that it evaluates the trend of news framing by gauging how media in three Chinese-speaking regions, with close ties in many ways, reported the Arab Spring and Internet censorship, which is remote and unfamiliar to them. In other words, this study was able to hold some of the common confounding variables constant, and thus logically cleaned up the association between ideology and news framing with possible alternative factors controlled. It is hoped that this will shed some light on the potential for new theoretical development in comparative framing research.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is thankful to the anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for their insightful comments and suggestion in the editorial process.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author’s gratitude goes to Hong Kong Baptist University for supporting a part of this research with a Faculty Research Grant.

Notes

Author Biography

Ying Roselyn Du is an assistant professor at Hong Kong Baptist University School of Communication. She received her PhD in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before receiving academic training in the United States, she was an awarding-winning journalist in China. She has published in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, Global Media and Communication, International Journal of Communication, Newspaper Research Journal, Asian Journal of Communication, International Communication Research Journal, among others.

References

Akhavan-Majid

Ramaprasad

(1998). Framing and ideology: A comparative analysis of U.S. and Chinese newspaper coverage of the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women and the NGO Forum. Mass Communication & Society, 1, 131-152.

Borah

(2011). Conceptual issues in framing theory: A systematic examination of a decade’s literature. Journal of Communication, 61, 246-263.

Brewer

P. R.

Graf

Willnat

(2003). Priming or framing media influences on attitudes toward foreign countries. International Communication Gazette, 65, 493-508.

Cambie

(2012). Lessons from the front line: The Arab Spring demonstrated the power of people and social media. Communication World, 29, 28-32.

Cheung

A. S. Y.

(2003). Self-censorship and the struggle for press freedom in Hong Kong. New York, NY: Kluwer Law International.

Y. R.

Cheng

K. L.

(2013). Framing the 2011 Egyptian Revolution within ideological boundaries: One incident, three stories. International Communication Research Journal, 48(3-4), 27-51.

Entman

R. M.

(1991). Framing U.S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of the KAL and Iran air incidents. Journal of Communication, 41(4), 6-27.

Entman

R. M.

(1993). Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51-58.

Entman

R. M.

Rojecki

(1993). Freezing out the public: Elite and media framing of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement. Political Communication, 10, 155-173.

10.

Freedom House. (2012). Freedom on the Net 2012. Retrieved from http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2012

11.

Freedom House. (2014). Freedom of the press. Available from https://freedomhouse.org/

12.

Friedland

L. A.

Zhong

(1996). International television coverage of Beijing Spring 1989: A comparative approach. Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, 156, 1-60.

13.

Ghanem

(1997). Filling in the tapestry: The second level of agenda setting. In McCombs

Shaw

D. L.

Weaver

D. H.

(Eds.), Communication and democracy: Exploring the intellectual frontiers in agenda-setting theory (pp. 3-14). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

14.

Guo

Feng

(2012). Understanding support for Internet censorship in China: An elaboration of the theory of reasoned action. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 17, 33-52.

15.

Hachten

W. A.

Scotton

J. F.

(2002). The world news prism: Global media in an era of terrorism. Ames: Iowa State Press.

16.

Hachten

W. A.

Scotton

J. F.

(2007). The world news prism: Global information in a satellite age. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

17.

Hallin

D. C.

Mancini

(2004). Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

18.

Hille

(2013, February 22). China tightens Internet ID controls. Retrieved from http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7ab3e9d4-50d4-11e2-b287-00144feab49a.html#axzz2LbSJwRkc

19.

Huang

(2013, February 22). Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: Report. Retrieved from http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/facebook-and-twitter-key-to-arab-spring-uprisings-report

20.

Kobland

C. E.

Kwon

(1992). Influence of ideology in news reporting: Case study of New York Times’ coverage of student demonstrations in China and South Korea. Asian Journal of Communication, 2(2), 64-77.

21.

Lasorsa

D. L.

(1997). Media agenda setting and press performance: A social system approach for building theory. In McCombs

Shaw

D. L.

Weaver

(Eds.), Communication and democracy: Exploring the intellectual frontiers in agenda-setting theory (pp. 155-168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

22.

MacKinnon

(2012). Consent of the networked. New York, NY: Basic Books.

23.

McCombs

(2005). A look at agenda-setting: Past, present and future. Journalism Studies, 6, 543-557.

24.

McQuail

(1992). Media performance: Mass communication and the public interest. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

25.

Merrill

J. C.

Odell

J. S.

(1983). Philosophy and journalism. New York, NY: Longman.

26.

Neuman

W. R.

Just

M. R.

Crigler

A. N.

(1992). Common knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

27.

Perlmutter

D. D.

(2007). Picturing China in the American press: The visual portrayal of Sino-American relations in Time Magazine. New York, NY: Lexington Books.

28.

Scheufele

D. A.

(1999). Framing as a theory of media effects. Journal of Communication, 49, 103-122.

29.

Semetko

H. A.

Valkenburg

P. M.

(2000). Framing European politics: A content analysis of press and television news. Journal of Communication, 50, 93-109.

30.

Seymour-Ure

(1974). The political impact of mass media. London, England: Constable.

31.

Stevenson

R. L.

(1994). Global communication in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Longman.

32.

Tuchman

(1978). Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York, NY: Free Press.

33.

Wanta

Golan

Lee

(2004). Agenda setting and international news: Media influence on public perceptions of foreign nations. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 81, 364-377.

34.

Weaver

D. H.

(2007). Thoughts on agenda-setting, framing, and priming. Journal of Communication, 57, 142-147.

35.

(1994). Command communication: The politics of editorial formulation in the People’s Daily. China Quarterly, 137, 194-211.

36.

(2000). One head, many mouths: Diversifying press structures in reform China. In Lee

C. C.

(Ed.), Power, money and media (pp. 45-67). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

37.

Zhang

Fahmy

(2009). Colored revolutions in colored lenses: A comparative analysis of U.S. and Russian press coverage of political movements in Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan. International Journal of Communication, 3, 517-539.