Based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses were advanced:
H1: The Taiwan newspapers will be more likely to be pessimistic about the future of Hong Kong and its press freedom than the China newspaper.
H2. The Taiwan journalists will be pessimistic about the future of Hong Kong.
The study was based on a survey of 834 Taiwan journalists and a content analysis of three newspapers in Taiwan and China. The survey is part of a large project. "A Comparative Study of Journalists in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan," of which To was the principal investigator of Taiwan journalists. In the survey, the respondents were asked to indicate their perception about the future economic and political prospect of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
A content analysis was performed to analyze three newspapers in Taiwan and China - the China Times, the United Daily News and People's Daily. The China Times and the United Daily News, both privately owned, are the largest and most influential dailies in Taiwan. The People's Daily is the chief Communist party organ and most influential daily in China.
News stories, analyses, editorials and commentaries that dealt with future of Hong Kong and freedom of the press in Hong Kong which appeared in these three newspapers from June 1, 1097 to May 30, 1998 were chosen for analysis.
Each item was coded to indicate its length, news categories, number of photo used and whether it reflected optimistically, neutrally, or pessimistically about the future of Hong Kong and its press freedom after the 1997 handover. News items were coded into the following categories:
Length: Each news item was measured in numbers of words and coded.
News categories: News items were classified as either news/analysis or editorial/commentary.
Optimism/Pessimism: After reviewing the entire news item, coders evaluated whether it reflected optimistically, neutrally or pessimistically about the future of Hong Kong and its press freedom. A news item was considered optimistic if positive values - for instance, success, optimism and such were associated with future of Hong Kong or freedom of the press in Hong Kong. A news item was considered pessimistic if negative values, including failure, corruption, pessimism, and so on, were associated with future of Hong Kong. The category labeled as neutral refers to news or editorial, which only reported neutral facts or contained about the same amount of positive and negative messages.
Six students in journalism at the National Chengchi University were trained to serve as coders. A test of inter-coder reliability was performed by using 14 randomly chosen news items. Inter-coder arguments were length (.92); News categories (.93): Optimism/Pessimism (.81).
