Media Image of the ROC Military – A Comparative Study of Negative Reports from Four Newspapers

• Main Authors: Chang,Yung-Cheng, 張永政
• Other Authors: 李俊毅
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7ms687

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 戰略暨國際事務研究所 === 104 === This study aims at analyzing the negative coverage of the military from Taiwan’s four major newspapers-- Apple Daily, Liberty Times, China Times, and United Daily News. Taking content analysis as a main research method, it compares the reports in terms of the amounts and space of the stories, the images, photos and pictures being used, and the differences of the objects and themes. The study obtains its samples from the database of “Daily News Summary” compiled by the Department of Defense, and takes as the time scope of study a five-year period from 2007 to 2011. It conducts a comprehensive inquiry into the negative coverage in the four newspapers through the following steps: establishing related categories, making operational definitions, coding, classifying, running statistical analysis, and interpreting the results. The main findings are as follows: (1) negative news coverage of the military appears around 1.77 times per day, with the Apple Daily and Liberty Times tending to have more such stories; (2) the Apple Daily tends to have negative stories in greater length; (3) around half of the stories come with photos or pictures; (4) the Department of Defense and its subordinate units are the most frequently reported objects, followed by the Air Force Command; (5) with regard to the type of issues, corruption comes first, administrative negligence next, and then training/drill incidents. After the quantitative analysis, the thesis undertakes a perspective of agenda setting to look into several representative cases, and draws from them a tendency of the newspapers to construct the image of the military, as well as some implications for the Department of Defense when dealing with the mass media.