Polls in an authoritarian space: reporting and representing public opinion in China

ABSTRACT

The news media’s use of polls is by no means the special preserve of democracies. Using the case of Chinese government’s official medium (i.e. the People’s Daily), this study set out to assess how poll results are communicated to the public in China by examining the presentation of methodological information in its poll stories, and how its web counterpart, the People’s Daily Online website, differs in its coverage of polls from a technical point of view. It then examined the outlets’ interpretations of poll results and the media logic the coverage implies in comparison with the political logic that shapes poll reporting in China. Further critical discourse analysis reveals the use of authoritarian populist rhetoric as a discursive strategy in both outlets’ representation of public opinion. Compared with the print outlet, the online outlet showed a more marked inclination to describe a certain class as ‘the people’ in anti-elite rhetoric.

KEYWORDS:

• Media logic
• political logic
• opinion polls
• online
• offline
• authoritarian

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yunya Song is Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research on journalism and media politics has appeared in, among other journals, International Journal of Press/Politics, Media, Culture & Society, and Public Relations Review.

Yin Lu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong.

Tsan-Kuo Chang is Professor in the College of Communication, National Chengchi University of Taiwan.

Yu Huang is Professor in the School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University.

Notes

1 The key words were Chinese terms similar to ‘poll', such as public opinion poll, online poll, Internet poll, telephone poll, mail survey, street survey, text survey, random survey, sampling survey, satisfaction survey, and so on.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hong Kong Baptist University under the Faculty Research Grant (FRG2/13-14/088 & FRG2/14-15/023).