Mainland China, Hong Kong Media Set On The 2008 Election Issues Research

In the year of 2008, Taiwan held the presidential election which attracted the intensive attention from mainland China and Hong Kong. Based on the direct election for the leader, Taiwan has been regarded as the trial field for observing the political democracy in Chinese society. 2008 Taiwan presidential election embodies unusual implications for the media both from mainland China, which is on the way to deeping the political reform, and Hong Kong that is scheduled to the democratic election. Due to different political and media environments, mainland China and Hong Kong inevitably show their distinctive agenda-setting on the coverage of the Taiwan election.By resorting to the agenda-setting theory and the method of content analysis, the thesis analyzes and compares the coverage of 2008 Taiwan presidential election by People's Daily Overseas Edition and Ta Kung Pao. The paper aims to find the reporting agenda of newspapers from both mainland China and Hong Kong. The thesis finds that the differences mainly concentrate on the reporting orientation, topics preference, and the reporting attitude.