| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 傳播管理研究所 === 95 === This research is designed to explore the ever-building international image of Taiwan by reviewing the news reports about Taiwan affairs from the American elitist publications. With the unprecedented advancement of communications and media developments, many people in the world has realized foreign affairs through media broadcasting. In the meantime, the perspectives about national images held by average people are greatly influenced by media reports, especially international news. The forming of Taiwan’s image is no exception. Any piece of news about Taiwan has affected the projected image on the world stage one way or another.
This study applies the methodology of content analysis to the news reports, letters, editorials and column reviews about Taiwan in the American elitist newspapers of The New York Times and The Washington Post, ranging from 1986 to 2005. The research acquires the samples form LEXIS-NEXIS database and analyzes the theme, main covered area, US-related content, independence-related content, leadership-related content, direction (strength) category and statement category from every sample. The researcher tries to investigate the distribution, important issues of different news themes, strength of content reports and the ever-constructing Taiwan international image.
This research reveals: 1. In terms of themes and main covered area, nation-wide reports are the major. 2. In terms of US-related content, it is stressed on themes about foreign affairs, economy and trade, cross-strait relations and national defense technology. It shows these news themes are the very issues about Taiwan the US is most focused on. 3. In terms of Taiwanese leadership-related content, politics and cross-strait relations reports take up the most proportion. This shows political and cross-strait relations reports were what Taiwanese leaders were most involved during the two decades. 4. Among the themes of the news, neutral reporting is the major, positive reporting the second, negative the least. However, Constitution Reform in the politics category, Foreign Policies and Relations in the foreign affairs category, Literature, Art and Recreations in the education, science and culture categories mostly appear positive reporting. Only foreign spot news, society and laws, accidents and disasters are the few with more negative reporting than positive.
Besides, in light of the quantitative ratio of news report samples, among all the news themes the most three categories are cross-strait relations, national defense and domestic politics. If we combine the small items broken down from the big categories, the category of cross-strait relations makes up the most proportion, followed by politics, foreign affairs, national defense and economy. The category of cross-strait relations totally takes up 38.09% and becomes the spotlighted issue of news reporting outstandingly.
Finally, based on the sample statistics gathered from The New York Times and The Washington Post, the top five accumulated amounts of Taiwan news reports are 2000 (72 items), 2001 (45 items), 1996 (43 items), 1999 (41 items) and 2004 (35 items). 2000 tops the list of reporting on Taiwanese affairs; it’s mainly because the second general election in Taiwan occurred on 2000. Chen Sui Bian and Liu Xiou Lien were elected as president and vice president. It was the first regime change ever in Taiwan’s history and the DPP took the reins. On the other hand, the KMT was voted out of office for the first time and became the opposition, which attracted the international media and led to a significant increase on reporting. In addition, owing to the first regime change, the DPP that was generally perceived as pro-independence came into power and made China highly concerned, which contribute to the increase on news about cross-strait relations and policies, national defense and independence-related issues in this year.
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