Between the prescriptive and descriptive roles: A comparison of international trade news in China and Taiwan

Abstract

What roles do the mass media play in national development? The classic perspective is defined by the four theories of the press. A ‘fifth theory’ adds a new role to the list: development communication. While five theories prescribe the normative role for the media, this paper contends that there are significant discrepancies between the actual roles and the normative roles, and more studies are needed of the actual roles. With that objective, this paper first identifies four prescriptive roles based on the literature: objective watchman, policy agenda‐setter, critical monitor, and public teacher. Then it examines the actual roles of the media by a content analysis of the People's Daily of China and the Central Daily News of Taiwan, focusing on news coverage of international trade, with trade statistics included for comparison. The results show that while the two newspapers display statistically significant differences in trade coverage, neither follows the development communication model closely. Instead, the classic four theories of the press provide better explanations for the media behaviour.