Newspaper coverage of emergency response and government responsibility in domestic natural disasters: China-US and within-China comparisons

Abstract

Based on a comparative approach, this article reports content analyses of news articles about a devastating earthquake that occurred in Sichuan province, China, from six Chinese newspapers, indicating that the Chinese media, in reporting the government’s emergency responses, had many similarities with the American media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Further comparisons, however, suggest that the claim of a ‘watchdog’ media culture during disasters, as measured by the frequency of media accounts of the government’s responsibilities, is still relatively premature in China. Moreover, party-controlled and market-oriented media in China had different focuses in their coverage of natural disasters. The market-oriented media played an important role in making the Sichuan earthquake more transparent and the authorities more responsible. Provincial media in China may be less regulated by the central government and are in a good position to cover sensitive stories outside their own province. But they will not have a long-term impact without an overall government policy of open information and media deregulation. By contrast, fewer variations in story focus were observed in the American media, and the overall difference is relatively limited.

Keywords:

• risk
• crisis communication
• media reporting
• Sichuan earthquake
• Hurricane Katrina
• China
• USA
• comparative study

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by The University of Hong Kong 512 Earthquake Roundtable Fund. The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions made by Qi Xu and Xiao-Jie Xu in the form of assistance in data collection and coding of the newspaper articles.

Notes

1. For example, a ‘negative-tone’ article criticised those to whom responsibility was attributed. A ‘positive-tone’ one discussed responsibility without criticisms. Articles were coded as neutral if it was difficult to identify tone.

2. See Dorn, James A. 2008. Disasters and development. The Washington Times, May 29, A16; Ford, Peter. 2008. China enjoys rare moment of global support. Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 1; The Economist. 2009. Silence on the square; Twenty years after Tiananmen. The Economist, May 30.

3. See New York Times. 2008 Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled, May 25 online http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E3DC163BF936A15756C0A96E9C8B63