Hidden messages in news: A comparison of English-language and Chinese-language newspapers that report Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan.

Abstract

This study compared the ideologies of U.S. newspapers and Taiwanese newspapers by examining how they reported the Sunflower Student Movement (SSM) in Taiwan. Twenty-seven news reports were selected from New York Times, United Daily News (Taiwanese newspaper written in Chinese), and Focus Taiwan (Taiwanese newspaper written in English). The results showed that the three newspapers framed the event differently. The New York Times reported the SSM from a distanced viewpoint, whereas the United Daily News was explicitly partial to the government by dramatizing the damage and condemning the violence in the occupation. In contrast with the other two newspapers, Focus Taiwan seemed implicitly biased toward the government by highlighting the conflicts in the movement while trying to report the event relatively plainly. Through critical discourse analysis, this study highlights how newspapers reconstructed the event differently with underlying ideologies.