Newspaper coverage of Chinese and group perception of Chinese

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Newspaper coverage of Chinese and group perception of Chinese immigrants Shuang Liu and Guo-Ming Chen Abstract This study employed survey and content analysis to examine the relationship between newspaper coverage of Chinese and group perception of Chinese immigrants. Content analysis was performed on 842 articles where Chinese were the major actors, from four Australian newspapers, in order to form a picture ofthe representation of Chinese people. A survey was then conducted with 265 respondents who were of Chinese origin, but living in Australia, to measure their perception of Chinese ethnic groups. Results from the content analysis indicated that Chinese actors, in general, were portrayed in four major roles: leaders, victims, ordinary citizens and criminals; and that the general tone of the newspaper coverage was neutral. ContrOlY to predictions, findingsfrom the survey demonstrated a positive association between frequency of exposure to newspaper coverage and the respondents' reported perception ofChinese ethnic groups. Results also showed that females or older people, or those who had stayed in the host country} longer, tended to read newspapers more carefully. Thesefindings suggested a possible improvement over the past few years in the representation oJ ethnic groups in Australian newspapers. They also pointed to a need to divers(fjl newspaper content to appeal to a wider range o.lreadership.

Introduction Examining the representation of Chinese actors in Australian newspapers and the relationship between exposure to such coverage and group perception of Chinese immigrants has theoretical and social significance. First, over the past decade, Sino-Australian relations have expanded to include fields of sciPerceptions of Chinese immigrants, AJR 27(2), pp. 135-149

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ence, technology, culture and education (Sun, 2003). Consequently, more and more immigrants of Chinese origin are coming to Australia, making the Chinese community not only one of the oldest but also one of the largest in Australia (Key facts, 2003). Second, literature on media effects and intergroup relations suggests coverage of ethnic minorities influences the way in which immigrants perceive themselves. Positive group perception contributes to the psychological wellbeing of ethnic minorities and interethnic coexistence. Third, an analysis of the representation of Chinese actors in mainstream newspapers reveals whether or not there is an improvement in the traditionally negative and stereotypical portrayal of ethnic minorities in the print media. Finally, an examination of the association between exposure to newspaper coverage and group perception throws light on the role of print media in influencing social perceptions. A considerable amount of literature concerning news media coverage of ethnic minorities and racial relations has emerged since the 1980s. Some of the studies examined stereotypes in media portrayal of ethnic minorities (for example, Alien & Hatchett, 1986; Lee, 1994; Pittam & McKay, 1993); others explored the roles of the ethnic media in cultural assimilation (Viswanath & Arora, 2000), and in cultural identity formation (for example, Khan, Abbasi, Mahsud, Zafar & Kaltikhel, 1999; Liu, in press). However, a search of previous research reveals that previous studies predominantly focused on the issue ofunderrepresentation or overrepresentation, and very few studies linked content analysis with measurements of social perceptions of the immigrants in question (Busselle & Crandall, 2002; Lee & Wu, 2004). In order to bridge the gap in this line of research, the purpose of this study was threefold: (I) to analyse the nature of newspaper articles where Chinese people were the major actors; (2) to examine the possible association between frequency of exposure to mainstream newspapers and self group perception of Chinese immigrants; and (3) to investigate how they believed their ethnic group was perceived by people outside the Chinese ethnic group.

Review of literature The history of Chinese immigrants in Australia dates back to the mid 1800s, when the first generation of settlers arrived as labourers (Markus, 1988). Although the population of Chinese immigrants decreased in the early 1900s, due to the White Australian Policy that placed many restrictions on the entry of immigrants (New Chinese, 1992), the influx of Chinese immigrants resumed and increased steadily in the 1990s under the influence of the promotion of multiculturalism (Department of Premier and Cabinet, 2000). In response to the needs of the culturally diverse society ofAustralia, specialised television channels were set up and broadcast in different languages daily. Moreover, the desire of advertisers to market directly to more targeted subgroups for various 136

Australian Journalism Review

products and services increased the frequency of appearances of minority groups in the media (Atkin, 1992; Entman, 1992; Oliver, 1994). However, close examination of the nature of the media coverage, in particular, newspaper articles where ethnic minorities were the major actors, revealed that Asians in Australia were represented in the newspapers as problem people and bad news (Bell, 1993; Jakubowicz, 1994), and ethnic minorities in general were continually seen in more disparaging roles than ethnic majorities (Loo, 1998; Mastro & Greenberg, 2000). As an institution of culture and an influential shaper of cultural thought, the news media influence the common consciousness of the public through the symbolic environment they create and sustain (Khan et aI, 1999; McLuhan & Fiore, 1967). This symbolic environment is commonly referred to as symbolic social reality (Adoni & Mane, 1984). When an ethnic group is represented in the print media, that symbolic social reality becomes a common category utilised by the general public to identify members of that ethnic group (Potter & Reicher, 1987). In view of this argument, the print media could serve as a potential contributor to perpetuating or diminishing racial stereotypes (Mastro & Greenberg, 2000). This role of the news media in activating and perpetuating racial stereotypes is particularly significant when the general public either have very little direct experience in these events or lack other sources of verification (Khan et aI, 1999). For example, Busselle and Crandall (2002) found that viewing different genres of television programs contributed to the differences in the respondents' perceptions of the reasons behind the achievements of white Americans and African Americans. Similarly, Lee and Wu (2004) argued that exposure to negative images associated with Asian Americans tended to create doubts and ambivalences about them among other racial groups. The symbolic social reality constructed by the mass media not only shaped the ethnic majority's knowledge and beliefs about the ethnic groups (Faber, O'Guinn & Meyer, 1987), but also served as an input for the ethnic minorities' group perception (Pfau, Mullen, Deidrich & Garrow, 1995). The concept of group perception could further be divided into ingroup perception and outgroup perception. Ingroup perception in this study referred to whether the ethnic minorities regarded their own ethnic group as worthwhile; whereas outgroup perception was concerned with whether the ethnic minorities believed their ethnic group was valued and respected by people outside their group. Group perception influences the level of identification based on group membership. In Khan et aI's (1999) study, the negative portrayal of ethnic minorities was found to influence their formation of a positive social identity based on their ethnic membership. Failure to achieve a satisfying social identity has been linked to a variety of undesirable social and psychological consequences, such as poor self-image, alienation and marginality (Berry, 1980; Tajfel, 1978). Therefore, to understand the effects of the print media on ethnic Perceptions of Chinese immigrants, AJR 27(2), pp. 135-149

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minorities, it is necessary to analyse the nature of the coverage, and examine the association between exposure to the print media containing such coverage and the way the ethnic group in question perceive their own group (Signorielli & Bacue, 1999). The strength of the association between exposure to newspaper coverage and group perception may be contingent on individuals' dependence upon the print media as a source of information (AlIen & Hatchett, 1986). Past research has shown that at an early stage in a new culture, ethnic minorities tend to avoid direct interpersonal encounters and resort to less personal, less direct mass communication as alternative and pressure-free sources of learning about the host environment (Adoni & Mane, 1984). Thus, it was assumed that immigrants who had lived in the host country for a longer time might read the newspapers less frequently, as compared with those who had been in the host culture for a relatively shorter period of time.

It was also assumed that the extent to which newspaper coverage influences the readers' attitudes and behaviours may be moderated by frequencies of intergroup contact, defined as the interpersonal contact between ethnic minorities and ethnic majorities. Previous research has demonstrated that intergroup contact could reduce bias or prejudice (Pettigrew, 1997; Wagner, van Dick, Pettigrew & Christ, 2003). One indicator of the frequency of intergroup contact was the suburbs in which the immigrants resided, because the proportion of immigrant population in a suburb may determine the presence of foreigners in the neighbourhood. For example, Hartmann and Husband (1972) found that adolescents living in low immigration regions had a greater tendency to define race relations in the terms used by the mass media, compared with those living in high immigration areas. The literature review indicated that research needs to be extended to explore more areas, such as the nature of the newspaper representation of ethnic minorities, the possible link between exposure to newspaper coverage on ethnic minorities and the immigrants' perception of their ethnic group in the host environment, the level of dependence of immigrants on newspapers as a source of information, and the link between dependence on print media as a source of information and the chances of having interpersonal contact with foreigners in the neighbourhood. To achieve this goal, this study attempted to examine the following research questions: RQ 1: What are the roles in which major Chinese actors are portrayed in the newspaper articles? RQ2: How are those different roles evaluated in the newspaper articles? RQ3: To what extent does exposure to newspaper articles where Chinese were the major actors influence the way Chinese immigrants perceive themselves? RQ4: To what extent does residing in a suburb densely populated by 138


immigrants influence an individual's reliance on the print media as a source of information?

Method - data and participants Data for the content analysis came from 842 articles published in The Australian, The Age, The Daily Telegraph and The Courier-Mail between January 1 and December 31, 2002. The rationale for choosing the four mainstream newspapers as a sampling frame was: (a) their large circulations; (b) their recognised quality; and (c) their place of publication (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are the three biggest Australian cities with a large population of Chinese immigrants). A 12-month time span was chosen as the amount of coverage where Chinese were the major actors may vary with ethnic holidays and/or political events, and a year's coverage would ensure reasonable representativeness of the patterns. All articles (for example, news items, features, editorial/opinions and letters to editors) that had Chinese as the major actors were initially selected. Sections focusing on the Iraq war, sports and finance were excluded as the characteristics of each would warrant a separate study. The pool of the 842 articles consisted of 73.2 per cent news, 21 per cent features, 4.8 per cent editorials and opinions, and the rest (l per cent) from letters to editors. Data for the survey were collected from 265 Chinese immigrants living in the urban suburbs of Brisbane. Respondents were recruited with assistance from Chinese community associations, churches, friends and students. The pool of respondents consisted of approximately 43 per cent males and 57 per cent females; their ages ranged from 20 to over 60 and the majority of them had either received university undergraduate (58 per cent) or postgraduate (27 per cent) education. At the time of this study, most of the respondents had been living in the host country for no more than five years (76 per cent); only about 13 per cent of them had been in Australia for over 10 years. Approximately 50 per cent of the participants lived in suburbs moderately populated by Chinese, and the rest were divided between suburbs either densely populated (27 per cent) or lightly populated (23 per cent) by Chinese immigrants. With respect to the most frequently used language for daily communication, approximately 69 per cent of the respondents reported they used Chinese. As a non-probability sampling strategy was used, it was difficult to calculate the response rate.

Instruments and procedures A coding scheme comprising 20 items was designed and pilot tested before its large-scale application. The 20 items addressed topics such as source of article, type of article, length of article, aspect of concern, locus of the issue, ethnic comparison, role of the major Chinese actors, attribution of the cause of the Perceptions of Chinese immigrants, AJR 27(2), pp. 135-149

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issue, as well as evaluation of the major actors, tone of the headline, tone of the article and overall judgment. All evaluative items were measured on a sevenpoint Likert scale, with I standing for strongly negative and 7 for strongly positive. For example, suppose the major actor of a news item was a Chinese Government official who had come to Australia on an official visit. If the words/expressions used in relation to this government official were primarily negative, such as "authoritarian," "ruthless" and "debilitating", the evaluation of this actor on the seven-point scale would be either negative or strongly negative, depending on the context. The same rule was applied to the judgment of the tone of the report. If the frequently occurring words of a report were negative, such as "disaster" or "devastating", the tone of that report would be rated as either negative or strongly negative. The last item on the coding sheet was overall judgment, referring to the position the writer of that particular article took: advocatory, critical, descriptive or unclear. For example, if a news article on Sino-Australian business cooperation focused on the mutual benefits of business cooperation and promoted future collaboration, the article would be judged as advocatory. If a news item just outlined what happened, when and where, without commenting on the event, it would be judged as descriptive. Items concerning aspects of concern or attribution of sources were measured either on nominal scales (yes/no) or allowed multiple answers. A research assistant with a background in journalism and substantial experience in coding newspaper items was employed to perform the coding of the articles with the primary researcher of this study. Approximately eight hours of training was provided prior to the first trial coding. Initially, 20 articles were randomly selected and the two coders were required to independently code each of them on the 20 items. After both coders finished the task, the Scott pi formula was used to calculate intercoder reliability. As agreement on four "identifier" items (date, source, length and type) was 100 per cent; and as another five items allowed multiple answers, those nine items were not subject to intercoder reliability calculation. Therefore, only the I1 items that either measured value dimensions (for example, tone of the report) or defined actors (for example, role of the major actors) were included to calculate the overall intercoder reliability. As this was a more conservative measure, the overall reliability coefficient of .73 was considered as establishing reasonably strong confidence in the accuracy of the data reported in this study. The survey questionnaire contained 19 it,ems, nine of which were adapted from the Collective Self-Esteem Scale (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) and Ethnic Identity Scale (Ting-Toomey, Yee-Jung, Shapiro, Garcia, Wright & Oetzel, 2000). The nine items were divided into two domains: ingroup perception (N=4, for example: I feel good about the Chinese ethnic group I belong to) and outgroup perception (N=5, for example: Overall, my Chinese ethnic group is considered good by others). All nine items were formulated as statements, fol140


lowed by a five-point Likert scale, with 1 standing for strongly disagree and 5 for strongly agree. The alphas of the two scales were .76 and .65. The other 10 items were divided into four domains, including newspaper exposure, intensity of newspaper exposure, demographic information and residential area. All survey items and instructions were bilingual to cater for the different language preferences of potential participants. After being pilot tested, questionnaires were distributed anonymously to potential participants via the primary researcher, Chinese community associations, students and mail during the second half of 2004. With each questionnaire, a prepaid return envelope was attached for the respondent to mail the completed survey back to the researcher. Data analysis Statistical analysis was first conducted to summarise data from the content analysis. Specifically, the major focus of concern was the roles which Chinese actors represented, the average evaluation of those different role representations and the overall tone of the reports and headlines. Next, the evaluation of different roles was compared to find out significant differences. Finally, variables representing print media exposure, intensity of exposure, demographics and residential areas were correlated with one another to produce a correlation matrix, indicating the strength of association between print media exposure and group perceptions as well as other demographic variables. Results RQ I addressed the major roles which Chinese actors represented in the selected newspaper articles. We summarised the frequency of appearance of Chinese actors and found they predominantly fell into two categories: individuals (43 per cent) and government (23.2 per cent). Table I presents the results. Table 1: Frequellcy oftypes ofcharacters appearillg ill the selected articles

%-J 362 I 43.0 f-: Chinese government 195 23.2 -------------: Leader of a country 57 6.8 :Chinese communi-ty---'-in-A-us-t-ra--:-1ic-a _-!_-::5:-::-6_-;---;;6-;:.7_-J 53 6.3 ~hinese community in China 51 ~ ~ Leader of a province Not specified 40 4.8 : Leader of a community 24 2.9 I Chinese community in other countries 4 I .5 i I 842--;---roo-: Total ! Characters

! Individuals

:Frequency:

i

I

!

Perceptions of Chinese immigrants, AJR 27(2), pp. 135-149

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Then, we looked at what roles these two major categories of Chinese actors represented. Results indicated that government primarily played the role of leader (80.5 per cent), and individuals played the role of victims (31.3 per cent), ordinary citizens (25.7 per cent) and criminals (18.2 per cent). Table 2 shows the results. Table 2: Role representation ofgovernment and individuals I

Roles - government

: Leader I

Other

,-

I'

I

30 (15.9%)

,-_____

'

I

i 113 (31.3%)1

: 158 (80.5%) Victim Ordinary citizen

I 95 (25.7%): I

I

4 (2.1%)1 Criminal : 65 (18.2%) , I (.5%) -pkr~---"33(~

Troublemaker I Hero

• Criminal :, Victim

Roles - individuals_

I

I (.5%)

IOther

30 (7.7%)

I (.5%)

I Troublemaker

22 (5.8%)

_I

Leader Ii-O_rd_in_a_ry_c_it_iz_en_+i_O_(O_