Poll Reporting and Journalistic Paradigm: A Study of Popularity Poll Coverage in Hong Kong Newspapers

Abstract

Opinion polling has become a common feature in news and public discourse in Hong Kong. This study examines how local newspapers cover popularity polls about the government and its leaders. It is hypothesized that newspapers adhering to different journalistic paradigms would cover such popularity polls differently in terms of the inclusion of methodological information, use of news sources, emphasis on negative versus positive results, treatment of polls conducted by different entities, and use of visual means of representations. A content analysis was conducted on four newspapers which represent the professionalism, populism, and propaganda paradigms, respectively. The results show that there are both similarities and differences in the poll coverage of the newspapers, with the differences mostly corresponding to the differences in journalistic paradigms. The results also point to a number of phenomena about news media in Hong Kong and poll reporting in general.