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立 政 治 大 學
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l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
“Textual analysis is a method of data analysis that closely examines either the content and meaning of texts or their structure and discourse. Texts, which can range from newspapers, television programs, and blogs to architecture, fashion, and furniture, are deconstructed to examine how they operate, the manner in which they are constructed, the ways in which meanings are produced, and the nature of those meanings. Sociologists, geographers, historians, linguists, communications and media studies researchers, and film researchers use textual analysis to assess texts from a range of cultural settings.”
Briefly, textual analysis is a term used to refer to a variety of primarily qualitative methodologies or models (Lockyer, 2008). This study references the qualitative data analysis
procedures (data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification) proposed by Miles and Huberman's (2014) at the part of textual analysis.
3.1 Media Coverage Analysis
According to Holladay (2010), media coverage is often used to create the “storyline” of the crisis by recreating the sequence of events that unfolded and the crisis communication efforts used by the organization. Media stories also may be examined for evidence of public and industry responses to the crisis communication. Holladay suggested that systematically examining media coverage can help to understand what the public learns, since most people's primary source of crisis information is the mass media (Coombs, 2007; Feam-Banks, 2007; Liu, 2010). Crisis communication practitioners can also evaluate whether organizations notice the crisis communication advice from media reports.
Examining media coverage is even important after the crisis is over. In order to comprehensively understand the ultimate effectiveness of the overall crisis communication efforts, it is recommended to continue following the media reports of the past crisis events.
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Samples. This study applied a textual analysis of media coverage from four Taiwanese news publications with highest circulation: the Apple Daily, the Liberty Times, the China Times and United Daily News, in order to identify dominant crisis response strategies and its effectiveness.
Samples were collected from these publications’ online coverage. Vast majority of televised news content originated from news publications, and print coverage shared similar content with its online version. This study examined these online media coverage to observe the attitude of
traditional media toward the tainted oil issue. Related media reports were searched by the keyword
“Lee-Chi” on the websites of these four publications. Selected media reports are located from September 5 till the end of the month in 2014, which include news articles and editorials. With initial search results, there were 75 articles about Taipei Lee-Chi, and three among those were editorials.
Dimensions to be observed. There are three dimensions to observe from the media coverage of Taipei Lee-Chi’s crisis event: (1) news frames and tone of the reports (2) organization’s crisis communication strategies, and (3) the effectiveness of the crisis management. By analyzing how media cover on organization’s tainted oil crisis, we can observe Taiwanese media's attitude toward food safety issue. Relevant editorials will also be included in the analysis, which may help to examine how the reporters and news organizations consider this issue.
According to Coombs (2006), calculating the amount of media coverage helps to evaluate the effectiveness of crisis management. An effective crisis management reduces stakeholders'
uncertainty in a crisis situation, and makes the organization resume normal operations as soon as possible. When the organization has its operation back on track, the stakeholders will turn their attention to other issues, and this crisis event is no longer newsworthy for the media. Therefore,
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
examining the amount of the media coverage not only lets us evaluate the effectiveness of organization’s crisis management, but also the level of seriousness of the event.
Taiwanese public relations scholar Wu Yi-chen (2000) proposed the Media Effectiveness Index, which helps to evaluate the result of crisis communication. To evaluate the effectiveness of crisis management, the media coverage analysis in this study adopted Wu's index as reference. The effectiveness of a crisis communication strategy is evaluated by (1) factoring in the frequency of citation occurrence of the organization in news media reports, and (2) calculating the positive or negative evaluation of crisis response given by the media in the reports. This evaluation would yield an approximation of how much the organization had the control of its public image.
Wu (2000) also suggested that by analyzing the tone of the media coverage, we can evaluate the effectiveness of crisis communication strategies. The reporting tone is critical in shaping readers’ view of the organization in a crisis. Tone of the media reports can be categorized into four types: positive, neutral, negative, or off-topic. A report with positive tone means the journalist had given credit to organization's performance. Neutral tone means there was similar percentage of positive and negative comments in the article. If media coverage adds to the negative perception of a company, it makes crisis management more difficult because it is likely to increase the
reputational threat of the crisis. On the other hand, neutral or positive coverage is an indicator that organization's responses are being effective.
The media coverage analysis in this study also included examining the public reviews of the crisis event. These public reviews were collected from online news media that enable publics to leave comments on every article. Similar with examining the tone of media coverage, public
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
feedbacks were categorized into four types: positive, neutral, negative, or off-topic. If the
comment included supportive words, it was categorized into the positive type. Neutral tone means there was similar percentage of positive and negative statement from public comment. Negative tone means the comment included criticism or complaints about the organization. If the comment was about things not directly related to the crisis or organization's communication strategies, then it was categorized as off-topic and would not be further analyzed. From examining public
feedbacks, we can observe how people evaluated the organization's crisis communication strategies, and compare which crisis response attracted more attention.
Overall, findings from the analysis of media coverage could answer RQ1, and to examine how Taipei Lee-Chi was represented in the media coverage. The results would discussed the news frame of Taipei Lee-Chi, tone of the reports from the four publications, the source cited in the reports, and feedbacks of the interactions with Taipei Lee-Chi from the journalists.
Taipei Lee-Chi’s crisis responses were analyzed chronically in accordance to Coombs’
Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Benoit’s Image Restoration Theory from the media coverage. The results can answer RQ2.1, which is aimed to observe crisis response strategies used by Taipei Lee-Chi in this crisis. Amount of the positive media coverage, public reviews on the organization’s crisis communication strategies, and the citation frequency of the organization in the reports can be concluded to answer RQ2.2, which is the effectiveness of the crisis management.