Research Question
This study examines how journalists negotiate their role conceptions and enactments in a comparative textual analysis of U.S. and Chinese media coverage of a historic fire in Shanghai, China in 2010. How journalists conceive of their roles and enact them in the coverage is the goal of the study.
RQ1: In what ways is coverage of the 2010 Shanghai fire among Chinese and U.S. media
outlets similar and distinct?
RQ2: How did Chinese journalists either challenge or acquiesce to Chinese government and
media system norms in their coverage?
RQ3: In what ways are Chinese and U.S. journalists consistent or inconsistent with expected
role conception and enactment behaviors?
Method
To guide the data collection and analysis elements of our textual analysis, we utilized variant of grounded theory.
We conducted open coding of the texts in the first stage of analysis. While sensitized to the concepts discussed in the literature, we did not force those pre-determined concepts on the texts. Rather, we read the texts to initially detect similarities and differences in coverage among U.S. and Chinese media outlets. Ultimately, open coding shifted to axial coding . Overall, our coding remained open to emergent possibilities, particularly how journalists negotiated and contested prevailing role conceptions and enactments. The number of discourses we evaluated, 39, represents when theoretical saturation was reached, essentially when no new concepts or properties emerged and spanning that six-month coverage period. During open coding, concepts began to emerge that more clearly and precisely demonstrated the negotiation and contesting of role conception and enactments among Chinese journalists as well as consistencies in role conception and enactments among U.S. journalists.
That influenced the next stage of coding, axial coding, in which we arrived at conceptual themes informed by the literature, as well as from our own emergent observations. We used NVivo, qualitative data management software, to conduct all coding phases and to write and record memos.
Findings
Found similarities in coverage among Chinese and U.S. journalists, including sourcing, narrative style/approach, challenging power/critique, objectivity and identified different journalistic approaches to challenging power.
Implications
Our findings suggest we should think anew about how role conception enters news construction. The burden of proof should perhaps be shifted: the assumption that role conception predicts role enactment should be questioned rather than presumed. Role conceptions may indeed contribute to how news stories turn out, but a simple causal explanation of role enactment based on role conception should be met with new skepticism.
This project was presented in International Communication Association Conference Washington D.C. 2019.