Framing bias : a case study of local newspaper coverage of Hong Kong Police during the 2014 July 1st protest

Abstract

Media arecentral in the public’s perception of police legitimacy (Chan and Chan, 2012), in part because most of the major events that reflect on police performance were not first-person experiences for members of the public but became “facts” when reported by the media. Many studies have demonstrated that members of the public tend to accept news from the mass media as the “reality.” Cohen (1963) points out that the media can influence their audiences about what to think and how to make sense of it. On the other hand, the University of Hong Kong's Public Opinion Programme(HKUPOP) research indicated a significant decrease in Hong Kong’s public satisfaction with the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) despite HKPF’s success in reducing the crime rate as a very stable trend. The present study aims to explore to what extent the Hong Kong newspapers have displayeda one-sided perspective toward the HKPF as a “consistent pattern.” To ensure that the study was focused, news reports related to HKPF performance during a July 1, 2014, protest were selected as the content to test the hypothesis that Hong Kong newspapers have consistentselectivereport preference and stance towardspolice performance on the July 1 protest.The July 1 Protestwas one of the most significant local events in recent years, given that it led to more serious protests later on. The hypothesis rests on the study tradition of agenda setting, framing and priming by the media. Moreover, five local newspapers were selected to be the media outlets for this study. They are Apple Daily, Oriental Daily, Ming Po, Wen Wei Po and Hong Kong Economic Journal. Three research questions were designed to direct the study. First, how didvarious local Hong Kong newspapers differ in their effort to frame Hong Kong Police performance during the July 1st Protest. Second, can any discernible content bias, in either text or photosbe found within these local newspapers in their framing of Hong Kong Police performance. Last, if so, how is this bias conveyed differently in different newspapers? Quantitative content analysis was used to decode the underlying message within the subject newspapers. In addition, semiotic analysis was applied to decode visual message content in the news report. The research results make use of a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis indications.