DOCUMENT RESUME ED 376 527 CS 508 738 TITLE Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (77th, Atlanta, Georgia, August 10-13, 1994). Part IV: International Media. INSTITUTION Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. PUB DATE Aug 94 NOTE 500p.; For other sections of these proceedings, see CS 508 735-744. For 1993 proceedings, sr,e ED 362 913-925 and ED 366 041. PUB TYPE Collected Works Conference Proceedings (021) EDRS PRICE MF02/PC20 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Broadcast Industry; Content Analysis; *Developing Nations; Ethnography; *Foreign Countries; Foreign Policy; Freedom of Speech; Higher Education; Hispanic Americans; Media Research; National Programs; *Newspapers; Racial Relations; Sex Fairness IDENTIFIERS Deregulation; *Media Coverage; Romance Novels; Television News ABSTRACT The International Media section of this collection of conference presentations contains the following 15 papers: "Testing the Interaction of the Third-Person Effect and Spiral of Silence in a Political Pressure Cooker: The Case of Hong Kong" (Lars Willnat); "The Use of Small State Variables in Research on Coverage of Foreign Policy: New Zealand and the ANZUS Crisis" (Lianne Fridriksson); "Romance Reading in the Third World: A Postcolonial Intersection of Gender, Ethnicity, and Sexuality" (Radhika E. Parameswaran); "Ethnic Culture and Television News: An Ethnographic Study of Hispanic Journalists" (Don Heider); "John William Powell and 'The China Weekly Review': An Analysis of His Reporting and His McCarthy Era Ordeal" (Fuyuan Shen); "The Growth of Television Advertising following Deregulation in Western Europe" (Debra Reece); "The South African Broadcasting Corporation's Coverage of the 1987 and 1989 Elections: The Matter of Visual Bias" (Maria Elizabeth Grabe); "From Enemies to 'Colleagues': Relations between Palestinian Journalists and Israeli West Bank Beat Reporters, 1967-1994" (Orayb A. Najjar); "Freedom of ExpresE.Ion and Editorial Cartoons: Political Change in Taiwan, 1972-1992" (Diana Beeson); "Content Analysis of the United States' Television Networks Coverage of Foreign News from June 11, 1983 to January 1, 1988" (Stephenie A. McLean and Maccamas M. E. Ikpah); "The Nairobi Women's Conference, the World Bank, and 'The Weekly Review': Defining Development in a Kenyan Newsmagazine" (Nancy Worthington); "Ethnic Media Serve Varied Roles: Miami's Haitian Media" (Douglas Walker); "Broadcasting for National Development in the New South Africa" (Christopher Paterson); "Postcolonial India: Journalistic Constructions: National Identity in the Contemporary Elite Indian Press: An Analysis of Selected Articles in 'The Times of India', 1991-93" (Sujatha Sosale); and "A Non Racial Political Campaign in a Racially Polarized Society: The Case of the Working People's Alliance of Guyana" (Donna A. Allen). (RS) PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION IN JOURNALISM AND MASSCOMMUNICATION (77th, Atlanta, Georgia, August 10-13, 1994). Part IV: International Media U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS CENTER 'ERIC) MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 61/This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it (A)C52 Ck I_ U Minor change:, have been made to improve .op,oducton quality Point, of view Or opinions stated :n documeMdermtneressardyrepmsent offir 411 OE RI position or policy 10 THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) REST COPY AVAILABLE Testing The Interaction Of The Third-Person Effect And Spiral Of Silence In A Political Pressure Cooker: The Case Of Hong Kong by Lars Willnat The Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Journalism and Communication Shatin, N.T. HONG KONG Tel. (852) 609-7702 Fax: (852) 603-5007 Internet: [email protected] Paper presented to the Mass Media and Society Division of the Association for Educators and Journalism in Atlanta, Georgia, August 1994. 3 Abstract Testing The Interaction Of The Third-PersonEffect And Spiral Of Silence In A Political Pressure Cooker: The CaseOf Hong Kong This telephone survey of 660 respondentsin Hong Kong supports the third-personeffect hypothesis to the extent that people overestimatemediated messages on others when they are more educated and more exposed to newspapers.However, this effect was found only for one-third of the respondentsand does not affect communicationbehavior. Respondents perceptions of public opinion onlyaffected frequency of talking about politics with other people. Political outspokenness wasaffected by political interest, newsmagazine exposure, education, being aregistered votei, and political knowledge and efficacy. 1 I myself am not influenced, but a lot of people are confused Chinese man discussing impact of government propaganda campaign after Tiananmen Square incident (Simons, 1989:1) One of the most influential recent theories of public opinion formation has been Noe lle- Neumann's "spiral of silence."Defining public opinion as views the individual can safely express in public, Noe lle-Neumann claims that individuals constantly scan the information environment, attempting to determine whether their own opinion is shared--or not shared--by the majority ofpeople, and only then express their views in public. She stresses that the mass media play acrucial role in the development of the spiral of silence because people heavily depend on the media for facts and for the evaluationof the climate of opinion (1984). According to Noe lle-Neumann, if individuals find support for their positionin the media, they engage in more public communication of this dominant opinion, thus changing theclimate of opinion by "speaking out". On the other hand, if individuals do not find support for theirposition, they remain silent and therefore do not affect the opinion climate. Thus, it is the fear of Focialisolation that constitutes this pressure to conform. Her theory sparked a long debate on the question of whether individuals accurately perceive the opinions of others, and if not, what does the.Z mean for processes of opinion formation, change, and aggregation? (Kennamer, 1990:393). A closely related idea about the formation of public opinion was proposed in 1983 byDavidson in the form of the third-person effect which hypothesizes that people are psychologically predisposed to overestimate the effects of mas3 communication on others. According to Davidson (1983), individuals who are members of an audience that is exposed to a potentially persuasive communication will expect the message to have greater effects on others than on themselves. Thus, "the greatest impact ofmediated messages will not he on "me" (the first person) or "you", (the second person),but on "them"--the third persons" (Davidson, 1983:3). Davidson (1983) also maintained that these perceptions have an impact on behaviors, a relatively unexplored component of Davidson's hypothesis (Perloff, 1993). He suggested that perceptions might influence such behaviors as attempts to censor media materials or unwillingness to participate in political discussions (Davidson, 1983:12-14). The effect that the communication achieves, however, is not due to 2 any direct persuasive influence of the message itself, but rather to thebehavior of those persons who anticipate, or think they perceive, some reaction on the part of others, and behave differently as a result. Combining this idea with the theory of the spiral of silence, Mutz (1989) suggested that the perception that the media influence others more than oneself may alter perceptions of the distribution ofpublic opinion, which in turn may influence the willingness to publicly speak out. There is also reason tobelieve that third-person perceptions may have a different impact on political outspokenness,depending on whether individuals are highly interested in politics, feel highly efficacious politically or areconvinced that their opinion is the correct one (Lasorsa, 1991). Similar to Mutz's study, the present paper proposes to empirically test the link between the two theories by examining the impact of the third-person effect on communication behavior in the formof willingness to publicly express one's opinion. To evaluate the relationship between the third-personeffect and political outspokenness about an issue that might actually lead to a "fear of isolation", atelephone survey was designed asking respondents about their perceptionsof public opinion in regard of the dispute between China and Britain over the political future of Hong Kong. The focus of this study is onthe influence of the third-person effect on people's willingness to publicly express their opinionabout British Governor Patten's highly controversial proposal for establishing a democratic structure in HongKong before the 1997 takeover date. In his first major policy speech, on October 7, 1992, Patten proposed a series of measures to broaden the voting base for the next Legislative Council election in1995.1 The Governor had not'sougnt China's approval for the proposals, and, had he done so, would nothave received it, because China regarded the proposals as breaching "agreements and understandings"which it insisted had been reached between British and Chinese foreign ministers in 1990. As Chan observes: "public opinion wars are often waged between China and Britain with the Hong Kong news mediaserving as the battlefield and as participants" (1993:120). 'Patten proposed that in addition to the 20 directly elected