How Now, Hong Kong? A Cross-Cultural Media Analysis Between 1997 and 2007 (2008)
Undergraduate: Kayla Tausche
Faculty Advisor: Jane Brown
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication
It's been observed that press systems operate with different purposes in different cultures: Certain Western media practice more libertarian styles while Asian media lean toward authoritarian styles, according to theorists. After Great Britain handed over Hong Kong to China, the island was to operate as ?one country, two systems;? Democratic institutions were not to be disturbed, but no legislation would keep China from installing newer and stricter ones. But the question of how the media would operate was left unanswered. The purpose of this study was to attempt to measure to behavior of Hong Kong media post-Britain and gauge whether they have adopted more authoritarian styles of reporting. A content analysis coded 377 articles from three newspapers?The South China Morning Post (from Hong Kong), The San Francisco Chronicle (from the United States) and the Times of London (from Great Britain)?for their length, style, sources and themes present. A sample period was defined in both 1997 and 2007 for all three newspapers. Little differentiation occurred between the Post during the two times or the Post and the traditional, Western newspapers. Articles from all papers tended to be longer and more opinionated in 2007, and while democratic progress was rarely mentioned, nostalgia for Hong Kong under Britain was mentioned often. Because of these findings, it is unclear to what extent Hong Kong media has felt the repercussions of Chinese ownership as manifest in reporting.