Conclusions

The thesis first examined the coverage of the suicide incidents to answer the first research question on the news presentation in terms of quantity of coverage, news source, and the use of photographs. The results showed that the four newspapers demonstrated a sharp difference in coverage quantity, where Liberty Times contributed rather limited articles, not even half of that of United Daily.

Source analysis revealed that the frequency of employers and workers being quoted as sources in news changed as the incident developed. Worker’s presence decreased, while employers gained greater attentions in coverage. Also, most interviewees in the “entrepreneurs” and “NGOs” were found to speak from the management’s perspective.

As for the news photographs, four major themes stand out: 1) the workers as parts of the dull working system, 2) the families of those who committed suicide as victims, 3) the dynamic hardworking Chairman, and 4) the iron-hand tough Guo.

The second research question addressed the framing in coverage of the

Foxconn suicide jumps. Analysis of the data revealed that “attribution of responsibility” and “economic consequence”, were identified to be the most significant frames in coverage. However, these two major frames were split in the four dailies: While both Liberty Times and China Times coverage was dominated by the “economic consequence,” Apple Daily and United Daily used “attribution of responsibility” the most.

It is also observed that these frames change to one another in different periods of the incident. June 1, the day when the company announced the wage increase policy, appeared to be the most obvious time divide. Stories published before June 1 mainly talked about attribution of responsibility and soon shifted to economic consequence afterwards. As for tone, coverage of workers generally stayed neutral with a subtle change from positive to negative. In contrast, stories of employers showed a shift from negative in the beginning to positive afterwards. However, the difference is too small to warrant a significant conclusion.

The third research question on the lexical presentation of worker and employer was answered with a further examination on how the two subjects were presented in each frame. In “attribution of responsibility”, workers tended to be negatively represented. They were described as “permissive”, “fragile”, “vulnerable to handle work under pressure,” and “spoiled as the product of one-child policy.” On the other hand, the company was also negatively portrayed as an iron-hand and capitalist exploiter with heavy wordings like “killing production line”, “blood and sweat factory”, “industrial monster”, “military management”, and “exploitation of young workers.” However, there was the discourse defending the company from different perspectives, such as working welfare, suicide rates, enterprise culture, and historical context.

In “economic consequence”, workers accounted for very limited portion in coverage throughout the incident. Before June 1, news subjects concerning workers fell on their expectation of wage increase with only one story published in China Times on May 27. After June 1, workers in this period usually referred to those who strived for better wages by strikes. Of significance is that no quote from any

individual worker was employed in this period, while only opinions from companies or scholars were used to express their attitudes toward workers’ actions. Similarly, media stopped picturing a worker’s hard time under difficult circumstances. Instead, they focused on the series of strikes, by negatively describing it as “a time bomb that threatens Chinese government” and the source of “the tension between labor and management, labor-management disputes, and the worries of social security.” Little positive coverage was observed towards this wave of strikes.

In contrast, employer’s discourse dominated news in this frame. In the beginning, most articles drew upon the economic consequences that the incidents brought to the company and the cross-strait economic relationship. After Foxconn’s announcement of wage increase on June 1, media started to shift their focus to discuss the economic consequences that might cause to Foxconn, other Taiwan-based

companies, and the global economy by suggesting that the wage increase range was

“far too much” that it might cause “inflation”, “pressure”, “management crisis”, and

“inestimable loss.” It seemed that Foxconn, other companies in China and consumers worldwide became the victim of workers’ request of wage increase.

In the “human interest” frame, the dailies usually drew upon those young workers’ working life and sorrows, by describing them as “robots” or “ants” that “are trained to be machines” and “live in the cycle of going to work, coming off work and sleeping” with “their eyes showing unhappiness.” On the other hand, Foxconn

chairman Guo, as the most described employer in the coverage, was presented from different perspectives. For example, he is “keen”, “strategic”, and “military” at work.

During the incident, Guo appeared to be “tired”, “tense”, “deeply painful”,

“occupied”, “teary red eyes.” After the crisis, Guo showed up as a “loving father” to his daughter as well as the workers. These adjectives carried heavy emotions that seemed to bring readers to focus on and sympathize with Guo, instead of the suicide victims.

“Morality” has been considered as one of the most commonly seen frames in suicide news. However, since the four dailies focused more on the labor issue in this incident, “morality” received less attention. On the other hand, although “conflict”

used to be regarded as the major frame in labor news, it turned out to be the least applied in news of the Foxconn suicide jumps. Reasons for such findings may be attributed to the fact that the conflicting nature of the incident appeared to be rather implicit than the other labor events.

The last research question took political affiliation as a factor to examine the coverage of the incident. Findings showed that difference could be obviously observed in the quantity of coverage, where the pro-independence Liberty Times covered the jumps much less than the pro-unification United Daily and China Times.

There was no obvious difference by tone in the four newspapers when describing workers and employers. Liberty Times showed apparent negative attitude to the

Chinese government and other China-related affairs in analysis of the suicide jumps in its editorials.