Hong Kong newspaper coverage of police deviance and its effect on public opinion polls of police performance

Abstract

Media plays a vital role in shaping our understandings about the world in our daily lives. Advancement of technology fostered convenient information sharing in societies. The Public may imperceptibly change their perceptions about the society by the media. This thesis aims at finding how Hong Kong media portrays police deviances and to what extent its coverage influences public perception towards the performance of the Hong Kong Police Force. In extension, this thesis examines if there are any correlations between the media portrayal and the result of public opinion polls regarding police deviance. Related articles from four Chinese broadsheet newspapers with different political stances from Hong Kong are collected for content analysis. Focusing on the controversy of police deviance during the visit of Li Keqiang (the Vice-Premier of People’s Republic of China) to Hong Kong in August 2011, a possible correlation between media’s portrayal of police deviance and the public’s dissatisfaction of police has been found. Yet, media’s effect on audience’s perception is found to be short-lived.