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Running Head: Who Controls "Ctrl+C"





Who Controls "Ctrl+C":
A Study of The Effects of Media Ownership and Media Type in China


Lu Shi
Master Student
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
Syracuse University
134 H Remington Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13210
(315) 478-2968
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Xueyi Chen
Ph.D Candidate
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
Syracuse University
903 Comstock Avenue
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(315)423-8273
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Submitted to the 2001 Call for Papers
Markham Competition of the International Communication Division
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

________________________
The authors thank Dr. Carol Liebler for her insights and valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.
 Abstract
        This project is aimed at examining the influence of media ownership (state-owned media vs. privately-owned media) and media type (traditional media vs. on-line media) on media's degree of conformity to official Party ideology in China.  A content analysis of four media--the Beijing Youth Daily,  21dnn.com, Phoenix Satellite TV, and sina.com--shows that neither media ownership nor media type had any independent effect on media's degree of conformity; only the interaction effect between these two variables was found significant.  Meanwhile, sina.com, a privately-owned on-line medium, was shown to be significantly more deviant from official Party ideology than the other three media. The distribution of news sources and that of deviant news in relation to news type  in all the four media were also investigated.  Results suggest that by strategically and selectively using "Ctrl+C," citing sources other than the Party's mouthpieces, and covering local news, where state control is more
relaxed, sina.com achieved a higher level of deviation.  The findings are also discussed within the framework of the symbiotic relation between the state and the business elite in China.
 Introduction
In recent years the whole world has seen dramatic increases in the development of Web-based new media.  China is no exception.  According to the survey conducted in July 2000 by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), an official organization specializing in the Internet development, Web sites in China had increased to 27,289 from 3,700 in July 1998.  Like traditional media, major Web sites in China have also fostered a large and growing audience.  For example, sina.com, the most popular Chinese site as rated by CNNIC, claimed to enjoy  more than 24 million daily page views, as well as 5 million registered users (Reno, 2000).
At the same time, Chinese Internet users have been mushrooming at an accelerating rate, rising from nearly 1.2 million in July 1998 to 16,900,000 in July 2000 (CNNIC, 2000).  As CNNIC's surveys show, more than a half of Chinese Internet users go on-line for the sake of seeking information, and more than four fifths of them read news when they are on-line. Compared to China's enormous population size, the size of Internet users in China may still seem tiny; however, the very existence of Internet users in this information-controlled country cannot be ignored.  Chinese Internet users are characterized by a group of information-oriented urban youths with higher than average education and income.  They represent an elite group that has the potential of leading the masses' opinion, and this has profound implications for social and political transformation (Lippman, 1956; Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Li & Bachman, 1989).  Thus, it is very important to see what information on-line media can
offer them which traditional media cannot.
Chinese on-line media are by no means free of state control.  Alarmed by the Web-facilitated dissident voices[1], the Chinese government has gradually institutionalized tight control over the Internet by issuing regulations concerning on-line media's various practices.  For example, in early 2000, On-line News Administrative Bureau, established by China's State Council for the sole purpose of regulating and policing on-line news, issued a decree forbidding domestic portals to post news reports from sources other state-controlled  media ("Online News Should be Prompt and Accurate," 2000).  It is speculated that restrictions of this kind will wear away the popularity of these domestic Web sites, which are vulnerable because they rely upon sources that could be suppressed ("The flies swarm in," 2000).
With new media development in China has also come diversification of media property rights.  The establishment of sina.com in March 1999 signifies the emergence of privately-owned news media in China, a substantial step forward  in the media industry.  In the growing body of literature on Chinese media, media ownership has been frequently addressed in media's process of commercialization, and, despite the fact that empirical evidence is scarce, there have been attempts to speculate about its effects (for example, Chan, 1993, 1995; He, 2000a, 2000b; Zhao, 1998; Lynch, 1999).
Do media ownership and media type have any influence on media operation in China? If they do, how? Will privately-owned media survive in China? If so, how?  The development of Web-based media and the emergence of private media ownership in China provide an excellent opportunity for researchers to determine influences of the two variables on media operation and news content. We intend to investigate whether privately-owned on-line media conform to the mouthpiece role as much as other media do.  We argue that in China, media ownership and media type have influence on news content such that privately-owned on-line media are more likely to deviate from official Party ideology than state-owned media or privately-owned traditional media.
Literature Review
Below the state's attitude toward China's private sector and new media is examined with close regard to the media conformity to the official Communist ideology. We shall also study the factors that influence a medium's degree of conformity to that role and discuss why conformity is particularly weak in new media. All of the argument below, however, is based on the assumption that strict conformity to that role is unwelcome to the Chinese audience, an assumption made in most of the literature studied here.
The State and the business elite from the private sector: A symbiotic growth
Entrepreneurs in the private sector, as defined by Pearson (1996), is an essential group of the "China's new business elite" whose economic interest is at one with the state and therefore catered for by the state.
Though the state still tries to assume some of the administrative functions once played by work-units (Zhu, 1999), scholars found that the society in China enjoys a symbiotic growth with the state throughout the reform. The grass root democracy that Zhu (1999) reported after a reform of community administration in Shanghai is a good example. In the reformed community administration the local economic and social elite negotiates with the government about community policies and then helps it with implementation.
The business elite also helps the state to increase their ruling legitimacy by running private enterprises. Li (1999) set the improvement of citizen benefits as the first prerequisite for today's authoritarian regimes to build up their legitimacy in ruling. Therefore, when Beijing was convinced of the inherently ineffective nature of state-own enterprises in the 1990s it initiated a nationwide privatization (Oi, 1999). Oi defined the mutual reliance of the businesses and the state as "state corporatism" where the interests of both sides are integrated.
All the scholars cited above shed some light on the changing attitude of the state toward the private sector in China. This attitude can be described as qualified encouragement: though not unaware of the political implication of a growing private sector, the state needs the assistance of the business elite for the sake of both the communists' ruling legitimacy and administrative efficiency. Thus the business elite from the private sector provide not only the source of legitimacy by maintaining economic prosperity, but also administrative support in public affairs. Sina.com, a joint venture listed on NASDAQ, is of course one of those companies in the private sector whose financial well being itself helps to strengthen communists' ruling legitimacy. Therefore it is reasonable to hypothesize that the state will perhaps leave some gray area in executing a policy that will potentially destroy the business of privately owned online media.
Although scholars like Zhao (1998) know well that private ownership does not automatically generate press freedom, they have agreed that the influence of media reform since the 1970s urged most media to survive upon their own revenues rather than governmental subsidy. Through that reform, only a few media with specific political missions have remained free from the concern that a loss of audience will threaten their survival. Lynch (1999), for example, noticed a tendency of mass media to create products that appeal to the assumed tastes of the target audiences, rather than to the tastes of the Communist Party. He goes on to point out that property reform in the media industry does magnify the effect of media's drive for profit.
The game between the state and the new media: Tight control of content only turns people to anticommunist sites
Scholars from many different disciplines study the threat posed by the Internet to the monopoly of information and to unified public opinion. According to the description of TCP/IP by the Internet forerunner Negroponte (1996), online information packages, independent of one another, contains large quantities of messages. Every package can go from place A to place B via various routes. Negroponte (1996) says that neither legislation nor bombs can help politicians control this network, for the message is sent through a variety of means. China's failure to silence student protest, posted in both business sites and university electronic bulletins (Ma, 2000), serves a classic example of the new media's reluctance to conform to the official Communist ideology.
China's constraint imposed upon new media mentioned in the introduction, as well as a series of regulations to control the speech freedom over the web (Ministry of Public Security, 2000), can therefore be regarded as the state's reaction to real challenges from the Internet.
With the state's attempt to control the web content in mind, it is also noticeable that the new medium, as Lynch (1999) observed, increases the government's awareness that domestic media need to increase their appeal. Otherwise, because the Internet knows no national boundary, audiences fed up by endless indoctrination are very likely to turn to foreign-based Chinese media now easily available online, many of which are more or less anticommunist. Lynch (1999) remarks that the Chinese government is a good game theorist who therefore does not insist on the media's propagandist mission as much as it did immediately after 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
The above-mentioned studies, therefore, reveal that the state is both ineffective and ambivalent in controlling the Web content. We hypothesize that as a consequence the rational choice for the state now is to let domestic sites like sina.com attract audience away from anticommunist sites. This is yet another reason why the state is unwilling to see Internet users bored away from domestic sites due to tightened control, in addition to the fact that a flourishing New Economy will increase the Party's legitimacy.
The volatile nature of China's media policy: Lack of agreement and consistency leads to policy deviation in the newsroom
The ideological role expected of Chinese media can be defined by the conclusion of a content analysis by Chang, Wang, and Chen (1994). They examined the content of two strictly controlled central media and discovered that post-Mao era Chinese media had been providing "knowledge necessary for constructing a forced consensus in accord with communists' rule and legitimacy"(p. 66).
It is perhaps the consensus among scholars interested in China's development that media reform has been the slowest compared to changes in other aspects of Chinese socioeconomic life. Thurston (1993) observed that since the turn to reform in 1992, everything and everyone has changed except the media. Her point is in part confirmed by Zhao (1998), who used her personal relationship with top journalists to conduct confidential interviews in October and November 1994 and obtained the Communist Party's six taboos circulated among major media and communication research institutions: no private media ownership, no shareholding of media organizations, no joint venture with foreign companies, no discussion of the commodity nature of news, no advocacy for a press law, and no openness to foreign satellite television. This ad hoc policy echoes well the neo-authoritarian assertion that the state's monopoly of mass media and inculcation of conforming norms are the cornerstone for political sta
bility in this developing nation (Li, 1999).
However, as Zhao (1998) herself clarified immediately, the very negative and colloquial formulation of the six-taboo policy itself illustrates the informal and reactive nature of CCP media policy-making. She explained that there is a lack of institutionalization at the top of the political system with regard to basic political decisions in China. Fewsmith (1996) found that there is a fundamental lack of agreement among the top political leadership over the procedure for sorting out policy alternatives. Not surprisingly then, by 1998 some of the six taboos above had been violated with the state's acquiescence (Chen, 1999).
In consequence, there is always a danger in assuming every policy issued by the Party is equivalent to a Western action in terms of effectiveness. In our case, the literature cited above explains well why sina.com was still observed to post entertainment and sports reports by its own journalists even after the state's ruling that unlicensed business websites should not be allowed to conduct reporting and interview themselves. Acquiescence here beats the ad hoc regulation, a common phenomenon for China's public policy. Therefore it is not safe to view the policy that online media are only allowed to cite from state-owned media will simply kill the vivacity of China's new media as some observers from the West said (for example, "flies swarm in", 2000).
Therefore, we hypothesize that in China privately owned portal sites will be less willing than other media to conform to the mouthpiece role since they have both characteristics which the scholars above define as lessening the degree of conformity in the newsroom: private ownership and new channels of communication. This hypothesis is also supported by the above discussion of the state's volatile media policy in that a constraint policy is unlikely to be executed with efficiency.
Method
Operational Definitions
A 2x2 factorial design is employed in this project[2], and content analysis is used to examine the relationship between media ownership, media type, and media's degree of conformity.  The independent variables include two factors: media ownership and media type.  Media ownership refers to whether the legal or economic property rights of a medium are in the hands of the state or individual/private group.  Media type here is confined to the distinction between the Internet and other more traditional technology. Both media ownership and media type consist of two levels: state-owned media or privately-owned media for the former, and traditional media or on-line media for the latter.  Thus, four types of media are needed for the comparison in this study: state-owned traditional media, state-owned online media, privately-owned traditional media and privately-owned online media.
The dependent variable is media's degree of conformity.  It refers to the extent to which media comply with official Party ideology.  We focus on the conformity of media content.  For news content, the official Party ideology can be illustrated in the following terms: Socialism is better than capitalism; any doubts about the legitimacy of the CCP's leadership are counterrevolutionary; the economy is developing healthily under the complete leadership of THE CCP; political stability is essential; good things/deeds always come out of socialist spiritual civilization; Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, the unification of Taiwan and China is desired by all the Chinese, and any statement, or behavior that supports the independence of Taiwan is very wrong and dangerous; democracy in the West is hypocritical; crimes are rare and severely punished by the effective legal system; corruption is rare and is often disclosed and punished; sports are about bring honor to the motherland rather than to individuals; activities of "evil cults" like Falun Gong are harmful to the society and should be banned (He, 2000a).  News types and sources are also examined in order
 to see how media would be able to deviate from the mouthpiece role.
Sources/Sampling Design
The Beijing Youth Daily, 21dnn.com, Phoenix TV, and sina.com were selected for analysis. The Beijing Youth Daily is a state-owned metropolitan newspaper, which is also available all over the country.  It was first set up in 1949 as an official organ of the Beijing Communist Youth League.  Its publication was disrupted three times, and its most recent resumption happened in 1981 (Zhao, 1998).  As a forerunner in media reform, the Beijing Youth Daily has been the source for several recent studies exploring the influences of market forces(for example, Zhao, 1996; Zhao, 1998; Zhao, 2000).  21dnn.com is a state-owned on-line medium.  It was founded in March 2000 by nine state-owned traditional media organizations in Beijing.  Unlike other on-line media affiliated with traditional media, 21dnn.com does not carry Web versions of any of the publications of its sponsors.  By October 2000, it had been the only Web-only medium (without print or broadcast version) that was licensed to hire it
s own journalists.  Phoenix TV is a Hong Kong-based privately-owned TV station and was started in 1996.  Currently, its major shareholders include Today's Asia and Star Holdings.  As the sole nonmainland Chinese medium that is allowed to air programs to the mainland Chinese audience, it could be considered a prototype of any a future privately-owned traditional Chinese medium: Most of its audience are mainland Chinese, and most of its advertising avenue comes from mainland China.  Last but not least, the chief executive officer of Phoenix TV is a former Beijing official who knows the rules of media operation in mainland China very well.  Sina.com was created in March 1999, and is the only privately-owned on-line media in China.  Currently listed on NASDAQ, Sina.com (NASDAQ: SINA) is the most popular site among mainland Chinese users. It can be seen that the four media under investigation neatly fit in the typology we constructed earlier (see Table 1).

Table 1 about here

Several factors led to the selection of these four media.  First, like many other contemporary media in China, all the four media are targeting the perceived interests of the general public rather than state propaganda cadres (Lynch, 1999). None of the four media organizations is fully charged with political indoctrination.  Second, none of the four media is funded by the government, including the two state-owned media.  Third, all the four media enjoy similar demographics: urban youths with higher than average education and income.  Meanwhile, in terms of geographical distribution, the largest shares of audience for all the four media are located in Beijing.
The unit of observation here was each news story in the aforementioned four media.  Feature reports were excluded.  This is because on-line media not only update their feature reports more often than their traditional counterparts, they also save previous ones at their sites. Traditional media do not re-run feature reports on the same day.
All the news stories Phoenix TV aired in Beijing were taped on November 20th. For the other three media, data of the same day were collected through their Web sites. Based on Macmillan's "snapshot" sampling strategy (2000), we downloaded news stories on the three sites at 11:55p.m. EST on November 20th. The Web version of the Beijing Youth Daily, downloaded from bjyouth.com.cn, can serve the purpose of this research as a traditional medium, because it is the exact same as the print version.
Coding
Each news story was the coding unit.  For each news story, six variables were recorded: medium name, media ownership, media type, news source, degree of conformity, and news type (see Appendix I for operational definitions).
A pretest of all the four media was conducted by two coders on November 14, 2000, six days before the formal coding began.  For the first three variables, the coders reached complete agreement.  For the last three variables, intercoder agreement was also found to be sufficiently high, with an average intercoder reliability coefficient of .93 (Scott's pi).
Statistics Used in the Analysis
The independent variables were measured at nominal levels.  Media ownership was coded as "state-owned," or "privately-owned." Media type was coded as "traditional media" or "on-line media." Degree of conformity to official Party ideology is measured at an interval level.  It was coded as: 1=highly consistent with official Party ideology, 2 = consistent with official Party ideology, 3 = somewhat deviant from official Party ideology.  Two-way analysis of variance was used to test both main effects and interaction effect of media ownership and media type on media's degree of conformity.  Chi-square tests were also employed to investigate the relationship between media ownership, media type, and news sources, and the relationship between media ownership, media type, and the distribution of deviant news in relation to news type.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
The search yielded 793 news stories.  It can be seen in Table 2 that sina.com and 21dnn.com carried far more news stories than the Beijing Youth Daily and Phoenix TV.  While sina.com and 21dnn.com accounted for 85.2 percent of all the news stories under investigation, the Beijing Youth Daily and Phoenix TV only made up 14.8 percent.  The comparatively limited amount of information that Phoenix TV (3.3%) and the Beijing Youth Daily (11.5%) carries is directly due to the limited space that broadcast media and other traditional media can offer.

Table 2 about here

As for news type, nationwide news was the staple, taking up more than one third of all the news stories (see Table 3).  International news and Taiwan news came the second (28.8%).  Our data might have slightly overestimated the proportion of news under this category slightly because of then fierce legal battles regarding the presidency in the United States.  Soft news such as sports, arts, entertainment, and sci-tech news came the third (19.9%).  Local news held the least share (14.2%), however, as we will show later, it is definitely not least in terms of importance.
Table 3 about here

Among all the news stories, only slightly more than a quarter were produced by staff reporters of the media (See Table 4).  The fact that on-line media focus on using "Ctrl+C," citing news from other sources, contributed to this small portion.  While more than three quarters of news stories in Phoenix TV and the Beijing Youth Daily were produced by their staff, only 6.1 percent on sina.com and 21dnn.com were.  In fact, sina.com was not even permitted to have its own staff reporters at all at the time the data were collected[3].  The two major Party's mouthpieces, the People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency, were not attributed with much significance, constituting only 7.8 percent of the total.  Other domestic traditional media served as the most frequent sources (46.3%).  Other domestic sites seemed to have gained some importance (26.1%). The overseas sources held only a tiny share of 3 percent, which corresponds to the Chinese media policy that only Xinhua News Agency is entitled to cite news stories directly from overseas media. As for the degree of conformity, all the four media were found to show slight deviance from official Party ideology (mean of 2.19, and standard deviation of .40).
Table 4 about here

Two-Way ANOVA Results
        Two-way ANOVA results (see Table 5) show that neither media ownership nor media type had any independent effect on the media's degree of conformity. Only the interaction effect between the two variables was found significant (F=6.746, p<.01).  It indicates that the effect of each factor on degree of conformity depended on the level of the other: the effect of media ownership differed between traditional media and  on-line media, and the effect of media type differed between state-owned media and privately-media.  Thus, our hypothesis was supported.
Table 5 about here

        Figure 1 presents a graphical display of the mean values for the four different levels.  We can see that the interaction effect between media ownership and media type was not a difference in direction; rather, it was only a difference in magnitude.  Sina.com was found the least consistent with official Party ideology (mean of 2.32, and standard deviation of .47).  Phoenix TV (mean of 2.08, and standard deviation of .27)was only slightly more deviant than 21ddn.com (mean of 2.07, and standard deviation of .26), which was shown slightly more deviant than the Beijing Youth Daily (mean of 2.05, and standard deviation of .27).  The Bonferroni tests suggest that mean differences among those three media were not statistically significant; only those between sina.com and the other three media were.

Figure 1 about here

Other Findings
In addition to news content, the distribution of news sources and that of deviant news in relation to news type also presented evidence for varying media conformity. As Table 6 suggests, more than 10 percent of news stories in both the Beijing Youth Daily and 21dnn.com referred to either the People's Daily or Xinhua News Agency as their source. Neither sina.com nor Phoenix TV adopted any news from the two major Party's mouthpieces in this particular sample. Phoenix TV was found to rely on its own staff reporters heavily, while sina.com was found to attach a great deal of importance to domestic traditional media (50.9%) and sites (40.1%).
Table 6 about here

Despite the state regulation that sina.com was not allowed to use its staff reporters, 4.5 percent of its total were covered by its own staff reporters (see Table 6), and more than three quarters of the news stories by its staff reporters were hard news.  A close examination of the data further reveals how sina.com tested the Party's limits by managing the "Ctrl+C" technique.  As mentioned earlier, only Xinhua News Agency is allowed to cite news stories, especially political news, from overseas sources directly.  Sina.com was found to have quoted directly from overseas sources on a single day 17 items, none of which could be categorically rated as non-political news.  However, it does not necessarily mean sina.com deliberately challenged the official Party ideology, because all news stories but one came from pro-communist overseas Chinese media, and in fact, only one items was coded as somewhat inconsistent with official Party ideology.
The CCP has tighter control over news with a possible larger scope of influence.  It is speculated that less conformity should be unfolded in local news than in news of other types.  This is because local news might be where there is institutional space for media to exercise more freedom.  Table 7 presents media's degree of conformity when news type is controlled.  Overall, local news in each media was found more deviant than news of other types. Sina.com carried more local news than other three media.  Results further suggest that only the pattern shown in local news was statistically significant ((2=15.004, df=3, p<.01). Local news stories in sina.com, which were inconsistent with the official Party ideology (73.1%) were shown to outnumber consistent ones (26.1%)greatly.
Table 7 about here

Discussion
This project is aimed at examining empirically the influence of media ownership and media type on Chinese media's degree of conformity to official Party ideology.  It was hypothesized that both variables had influences on media's degree of conformity, and privately-owned on-line media were conjectured to be less likely to conform to official Party ideology.
A content analysis of four media--the Beijing Youth Daily,  21dnn.com, Phoenix Satellite TV, and sina.com--was conducted.  Altogether 793 were analyzed.  Results indicate that neither media ownership nor media type had any independent effect on media's degree of conformity; only the interaction effect between these two variables was found significant.  Sina.com, a privately-owned on-line medium, was shown to be more deviant from official Party ideology than the other three.  Our hypothesis was supported.
The distribution of news sources and that of deviant news in relation to news type  in all the four media were also investigated.  Our data suggest that sina.com achieved a higher level of deviation by strategically and selectively using "Ctrl+C," citing sources other than the Party's mouthpieces, and covering local news, where state control is more relaxed,
This project has not only enriched the empirical body of Chinese media studies, it also has profound theoretical implications, especially for understanding the state-media interaction.  From this project, we can infer that one of the central concerns for the state is its ruling legitimacy. It is through concern of ruling legitimacy provided by economic prosperity that the state allows the media to appeal to the taste of the general public rather than the Party.  It is also the fear of loss of legitimacy that the challenge from deviant news stories are tolerated to a certain degree, mostly at the local or lower levels.  On the media's side, we observed the central concern for profit. The vast majority of deviant news stories here come from China's profit-driven media, even though most of them are still owned by the state. Media ownership, as Lynch (1999) pointed out, takes effect on the degree of deviation through magnifying the drive for profit. We can also infer that it is throug
h the fear of fine and ban that sina.com runs deviant news mainly under the municipal level. The whole picture of the state-media interaction, then, is a kind of symbiosis where each organism is intensely cautious regarding the other. Therefore, although we might feel justified in hailing the surge of Web sites as another step toward press freedom in China, it is probably naive to hope those profit-driven Web sites to take on any dissident role.
Some limitations of this study should be noted.  Several factors posed threats to the reliability and validity of this research.  First, the operationalization of media's degree of conformity was limited to manifest news content only.  For future research, journalistic practices that produce news should also be taken into consideration, and field work should be conducted for a better understanding of dynamics behind news production.  Meanwhile, media's degree of conformity was measured by a single 3-point variable.  More sophisticated indicators are required so as to detect at a more accurate level differences which might be ignored otherwise.  Second, the fact that this was only a one-shot study might underestimate to a certain degree on-line media's degree of deviation.  As coders' notes suggest, on-line media might be more likely than traditional media to test the Party's limits, because only on-line media can post deviant news stories and then easily delete them if necessary.
 Longitudinal studies are needed. In addition, that only one medium was used for each category also challenged the generalizability of this research.  Different media in different regions should be included in future research in order to understand cross-media and cross-regional differences.
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Zhao, Y. (2000). From commercialization to conglomeration: The transformation of the Chinese Press within the orbit of the party state.  Journal of Communication, 50(2), 3-26.
 Appendix I

CODING INSTRUCTIONS

        The medium is the unit of analysis.  Each news item is the unit of observation, that is, the coding unit.  Only news story are included for recording.  Features are excluded  The coding procedure identifies and records the following elements:

1. Medium name
(1) Sina.com
(2) 21dnn.com
(3) Phoenix TV
(4) Beijing Youth Daily

2. Media ownership
(1) State-owned.
This category includes the Beijing Youth Daily and  21dnn.com.
(2) Private.
This category includes Phoenix TV and sina.com.

3. Media type
(1) Online.
This category includes 21dnn.com and sina.com.
(2) Traditional.
This category includes Beijing Youth Daily and Phoenix TV.

4. Degree of conformity.  This variable primarily refers to whether the news story conforms with or deviates from official Party ideology.
        The official Party ideology in news media can be described in the following terms:
a)      Socialism is better than capitalism;
b)      Any doubts about the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP)leadership are counterrevolutionary;
c)      The economy is developing healthily under the complete leadership of the CCP;
d)      Political stability is essential.
e)      Good things/deeds always come out of socialist spiritual civilization;
f)      Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, the unification of Taiwan and China is desired by all the Chinese, and any statement, or behavior that supports the independence of Taiwan is very wrong and dangerous;
g)      Democracy in the West is hypocritical;
h)      Crimes are rare and severely punished by the effective legal system;
i)      Corruption is rare and is often disclosed and punished;
j)      Sports are about bring honor to the motherland rather than to individuals;
k)   Activities of "evil cults" like Falun Gong are harmful to the society and should be
banned.
(1) Highly consistent with official Party ideology.
This category includes news reports advocating explicitly one or more of the aforementioned elements of the official Party ideology, and other explicit propaganda, such as news reports of how Falun Gong destroys happy families.
(2) Consistent with the official Party line.
        This category includes implicit indoctrination, which do not belong to either (1) or (3).
(3) Somewhat inconsistent with official Party ideology.
        In addition to new reports explicitly inconsistent with the official ideology, this category includes seemingly neutral reports such as:
a)      negative reports of PRC or whatsoever (for example, news reports of an economist's prediction of unemployment in China; news reports of social problems caused by the enlarging size of laid-off workers; however, a news report about how the problems was solved by the Government should be coded as "1"--consistent with official Party ideology);
b)      reports of crimes, unfortunate accidents, natural disasters, suicides, political scandals or whatsoever;
c)      neutral reports that fail to point out official Party ideology (for example, news reports of Dalai Lama,  Gao Xingjian, or independence of Taiwan without any condemnation or criticism);
d)      negative reports of other communist countries or positive reports of former Soviet Bloc or whatsoever(for example, famine in North Korean, or  collapse of Milosevic's regime);
e)      news reports of artists, scientists, scholars' negative remarks regarding domestic issues or whatsoever (for example, a new report of an experiment that refutes Darwin's evolutionism).

5. News type. This variable refers to the focus of each news story.
(1) Domestic news.
This category includes reports of events that occur at the national or provincial level in PRC.  It also includes: reports of events in Hong Kong and Macao; reports of PRC's foreign policy issues.
        This category excludes: reports of Taiwan; reports of events of arts, sports, entertain ment, science and technology, even if they take place in PRC.
(2) International/Taiwan.
This category includes reports of events that occur outside PRC (including Hong Kong and Macao). It also includes reports of Taiwan.
        This category excludes: reports of Hong Kong and Macao; reports of any international events of arts, sports, entertainment, science and technology.
(3) Local/regional.
This category includes domestic reports of events with the scopes of influences or relevance limited to the municipal level or lower levels.
(4) Sports/arts/entertainment/science/technology.
        This category includes news reports of events of arts, sports, entertainment, science and technology regardless of their geographical locations.

6. Source. This variable refers to the source where the news story comes from.
(1) Staff reporters.
This category includes reporters on the staff of each medium under examination.
(2) Mouthpieces.
This category includes Xinhua News Agency and the People's Daily.
(3) Other domestic traditional media.
This category includes domestic print, broadcast and other traditional media excluding Xinhua News Agency and the People's Daily.
(4) Domestic sites.
This category includes online media that are operated in China.  Those online media are typically sponsored by financially strong traditional media.  However, their sites are not necessarily consistent with the content of the sponsor traditional media.
This category excludes online media in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
(5) Overseas media.
This category includes all media that operate outside mainland China.  Media in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are also included.

  Table 1       Typology of media under investigation.



Media Type
Traditional
media
On-line
media

Media Ownership
State-owned
media


Beijing Youth Daily

21ddn.com
Privately-owned media

Phoenix TV

sina.com

 Table 2        Percentages for news items on different media.




Variable

%

News items on...

State-owned traditional medium

Privately-owned traditional media

State-owned on-line medium

Privately-owned on-line medium



11.5%

  3.3%

37.7%

47.5%

100.0%
(N =793)

 Table 3        Percentages for news items of different types.




News Type

%


Nationwide news

Local news

International news, including Taiwan news

Sports, arts, entertainment, and sci-tech news



37.1%

14.2%

28.8%


19.9%

100.0%
(N =793)


 Table 4        Percentages for news source.




News Source

%


Party's mouthpieces

Staff reporters

Other traditional domestic
Media

Other domestic sites

Oversea sources


7.8%

16.8%

46.3%


26.1%

  3.0%
100.0%
(N = 793)




 Table 5        Two-way Analysis of Variance of media ownership and media type on degree of conformity.



Degree of Conformity*

Main Effects & Interaction

Means

Std. Devs.

F

Significance

Main effect of media ownership


1.420

ns
state-owned media
2.06
.27
private media
2.30
.46

Main effect of media type

1.219

ns
traditional media
2.06
.27
on-line media
2.21
.41

Interaction between media ownership and media type


6.746


p<.01
state-owned traditional medium
2.05
.27
state-owned on-line medium
2.07
.26
private traditional medium
2.08
.27
private on-line medium
2.32
.47
--------------------------------
* News stories were coded as: 1 = highly consistent with the official Party line, 2 = consistent with the official Party line, 3 = somewhat inconsistent with the official Party line
 Table 6        Crosstabulation of new source by media.



Media

News Source
Publicly- owned
traditional medium
Privately-owned traditional medium
Publicly- owned online medium
Privately- owned online medium

Party's mouthpieces

13.2%


16.7%

Staff reporters

72.5%

100.0%

8.0%

4.5%

Other traditional domestic
Media

6.6%


56.5%

50.9%

Other domestic sites

1.1%

18.4%

40.1%

Oversea sources

6.6%

100.0%

.3%

4.5%
100.0%
(N=91)
100.0%
(N=26)
100.0%
(N=299)
100.0%
(N=377)
 Table 7        Crosstabulation of degree of conformity by media, controlling for news type (to be continued)




Degree of conformity
(No controls)
News Type
Nationwide News
Local News

Media

Media

Media
STM*
SOM*
PTM*
POM*
STM
SOM
PTM
POM
STM
SOM
PTM
POM

Consistent with official Party ideology


93.4%


92.3%


93.0%


68.2%


88.9%


93.8%


100.0%


74.3%


80.0%


40.0%


66.7%


26.1%

Deviant from official Party ideology


6.6%


7.7%


7.0%


31.8%


11.1%


6.2%


25.7%


20.0%


60.0%


33.2%


73.9%
100.0%
(N=91)
100.0%
(N=26)
100.0%
(N=299)
100.0%
(N=377)
100.0%
(N=36)
100.0%
(N=81)
100.0%
(N=2)
100.0%
(N=175)
100.0%
(N=10)
100.0%
(N=5)
100.0%
(N=6)
100.0%
(N=92)

(2 = 80.13, df = 3, p <.001
Cramer's V = .318

(2 = 15.004, df = 3, p <.01
Cramer's V = .364

* STM, SOM, PTM, and POM  stand for  state-owned traditional medium, state-owned on-line medium, privately-owned traditional medium, and privately-owned on-line medium, respectively.
 Table 7        Crosstabulation of degree of conformity by media, controlling for news type.




Degree of conformity
(No controls)
News Type
International news, including Taiwan news
Sports, arts, entertainment, and science and technology news

Media

Media

Media
STM*
SOM*
PTM*
POM*
STM
SOM
PTM
POM
STM
SOM
PTM
POM

Consistent with official Party ideology


93.4%


92.3%


93.0%


68.2%


100.0%


96.2%


100.0%


96.8%


100.0%


91.7%


100.0%


76.5%

Deviant from official Party ideology


6.6%


7.7%


7.0%


31.8%




3.8%


3.2%




8.3%


23.5%
100.0%
(N=91)
100.0%
(N=26)
100.0%
(N=299)
100.0%
(N=377)
100.0%
(N=15)
100.0%
(N=104)
100.0%
(N=16)
100.0%
(N=93)
100.0%
(N=30)
100.0%
(N=109)
100.0%
(N=2)
100.0%
(N=17)

(2 = 80.13, df = 3, p <.001

Cramer's V = .318
ù       STM, SOM, PTM, and POM  stand for  state-owned traditional medium, state-owned on-line medium, privately-owned traditional medium, and privately-owned on-line medium, respectively.










Figure 1        Two-way analysis of variance between media ownership and media type on degree of conformity

State-owned media

Privately-owned media





Main effect of media ownership: F = 1.420, df = 1, ns
Main effect of media type: F = 1.219, df = 1, ns
Interaction of media ownership by media type: F = 6.736, p<.01

--------------------------------
ù       * News stories were coded as: 1 = highly consistent with official Party ideology, 2 = consistent with official Party ideology, 3 = somewhat inconsistent with official Party ideology
[1]  On May 24, 2000, major news sources across the world reported that students at Beijing University, furious over the way college authorities responded to the rape and murder of the female schoolmate, staged campus protests seeking a meeting with university officials (Ma, 2000). Although in the past the university had managed to suppress the news of similar cases, this time the students had easy access to the Internet and used various sites to organize numerous protests despite the public security bureau's reactive ban on online debate over this case . Finally, as the protests escalated in magnitude and gained international attention, the school authority gave in and licensed a university funeral for the victim. Wenhui, a pro-communist Hong Kong newspaper, published a report later saying that the State Council was "very much determined to find and punish the murderer" (Li, 2000). With the help of the new media, the protest ended up as the first ever successful student movement
since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, providing a dramatic example of the new media facilitating grassroots democracy in an authoritarian country.
[2]  Factorial design can be used in observational studies, as well as experimental studies (Moore & McCabe, 1998).
[3]  Even now sina.com's staff reporters are only permitted to cover soft news.