PROJECT TITLE: Local Journalism and Pacific Perspectives on Contemporary China-Taiwan Conflict in Oceania

PROJECT OF STUDY

As a key contested area between China and Taiwan, Oceania is increasingly important in world geopolitics. Yet Oceania’s citizens are victims of this great-power struggle as both sides pay politicians for recognition—local journalism is crucial for Pacific Islanders to hold governments accountable. Pacific newspapers are vital in understanding local perspectives—yet they are often poorly funded and lack editorial independence. 

My project investigates relationships between media and government in the Pacific, spotlighting these questions: 

1. What factors affect Pacific newspapers’ coverage of China-Taiwan competition? (In articles written by independent press vs. government-owned press vs. outlets owned by magnates in the Pacific, what differs in coverage of China and Taiwan?)
2. How do local news coverage and local voices influence Pacific governments’ strategic decision-making about China and Taiwan? (Does the presence or absence of independent media have any effect on countries' choices?)

BACKGROUND

Discussions of media and policymaking in the contemporary Pacific are limited. While many authors have studied the influence of newspapers in Oceania, their analysis focuses on the past: Barney (1974), for example, focuses on 19th-century Tongan newspapers, while Chapin (1996) surveys Hawaiian newspapers’ influence until 1976., Only Singh (2004) discusses the influence of contemporary newspapers in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga on governance, while Power (2023) performs a content analysis to discuss how local media in the Pacific influences domestic policy on violence against women., My project will apply methods from these authors, like Power’s content analysis, towards the study of Pacific local media’s influence on foreign policy — a subject no authors, to my understanding, have published research on.

Studying media is crucial in understanding contemporary policymaking, as several studies illustrate. Grossman (2022) shows that media coverage is crucial in influencing public policy, while Paalman (1997) provides a formula for conducting effective media analysis. Hilbig (2022) studies German newspapers to find that a broader media presence correlates with increased policy responses to economic anxiety, while Jennings and Rubado (2019) find that cuts to local newspaper coverage are associated with reduced voter turnout and less competitive local elections in California.

METHODOLOGY

I will use 44 Pacific newspapers’ freely available online archives in this study, categorizing each paper by ownership history, frequency and location of publication, editorial independence and presence or absence of competition to understand what factors influence newspapers’ coverage. Next, I will analyze each paper’s coverage, using Python to initially scrape these papers’ websites and locate articles containing China/Taiwan-related keywords, then running a content analysis to catalog each article as pro-Taiwan, pro-China, or neutral. I will then use R to analyze the way this coverage changes over time to determine whether state policy towards China and Taiwan correlates with changes in news coverage—reflecting local opinions. 

Within this project, I will focus on the past five years—a time of major change in the Pacific: three countries have switched recognition since 2019, and another, Tuvalu, looks poised to join them. I’ll focus on print media from seventeen Pacific countries or territories, excluding those without available online newspapers (ie. Kiribati) and Western powers (Australia and New Zealand).

In addition, I will perform a literature review of the media’s importance in Oceania and China-Taiwan relations in the Pacific to contextualize my quantitative study, relying on journal articles, books and publicly available government documents.

POTENTIAL IMPACT

This project ventures into understudied territory — namely, the study of journalism’s influence on international affairs. As an aspiring journalist myself, I believe strongly in the power of journalism — in particular, I hope this project will create a new understanding of how a free press plays a major role not just in national politics, but in international politics, particularly in the closely contested Pacific. 

SOURCES

Barney, Ralph D. “An Early Public War of Words in Pacific Politics: Tonga, 1860-1890.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society 83, no. 3 (1974): 349–60.

Chapin, Helen Geracimos. Shaping History: The Role of Newspapers in Hawai`i. University of Hawai’i Press, 1996. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqtm0.

Freedom House. “Countries and Territories.” Accessed January 29, 2024. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores.

Grossman, Emiliano. “Media and Policy Making in the Digital Age.” Annual Review of Political Science 25, no. 1 (2022): 443–61. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-103422.

Hilbig, Hanno. “The Role of Media in Hard Times: How Local Newspapers Affect Policy Responses to Economic Crises,” 2022.

Jennings, Jay, and Meghan Rubado. Newspaper Decline and the Effect on Local Government Coverage. Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin, 2019.

Paalman, Maria. “Media Analysis for Policy Making.” Health Policy and Planning 12, no. 1 (1997): 86–91.

Peake, Gordon, and Camilla Pohle. “Financially Weak Pacific Island States Are Vulnerable to China.” United States Institute of Peace, January 18, 2024. https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/01/financially-weak-pacific-island-states-are-vulnerable-china.

Piringi, Charley. “Solomon Islands Newspaper Pledged to Promote ‘Truth about China’s Generosity’ in Return for Funding.” The Guardian, August 2, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/02/solomon-islands-newspaper-pledged-to-promote-truth-about-chinas-generosity-in-return-for-funding.

Power, Kate. “Pacific-Based Newspaper Reporting on Violence against Women and Girls.” Communication Research and Practice 9, no. 1 (January 2, 2023): 83–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2023.2188696.

Singh, Shailendra. “Media Ownership in Oceania: Three Case Studies in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.” Pacific Journalism Review : Te Koakoa 10, no. 2 (September 1, 2004): 47–68. https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v10i2.804.