3. RESEARCH METHOD
3.1 Data Selection and Collection
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3. Research Method
This study uses a content analysis to investigate celebrities’ self-presentation on social media platforms, as well as its influence on mass media and audiences. Berelson (1952) defined a content analysis as “a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of manifest content of communities.” Ole Holsti (1961) defined a content analysis as “any technique for making inferences by objectively and systematically identifying specified characteristics of messages”. It combines quantitative and qualitative research and is suitable for large amounts of data. A content analysis can be represented by sets of procedures including: 1) data collection and selection, 2) distinguishing categories, 3) deciding units of analysis, 4) deciding the context of analysis, 5) establishing a system of enumeration, 6) making an analysis. These six procedures have to be analyzed step by step (吳明清, 2002), and they are detailed below.
3.1 Data Selection and Collection
Yi Neng Jing (Yi hereafter) and the Apple Daily newspaper are chosen as a case study for several reasons, the first of which is that Yi fits the standard as a celebrity. According to Gabler’s definition (2001), a celebrity is “…a person who, by the very process of living, provided entertainment for us—a definition that embraced most conventional entertainers…whose lives fill the gossip columns and magazines.” According to Wikipedia, Yi has been in the Taiwanese entertainment field since 1986 and is widely known in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. She has released 28 records and acted in 17 dramas and 13 films.
She was nominated as Best Actress in the 32nd Golden Horse Awards, the main major film festival in Taiwan. Yi is also a writer. Her book “Words of Life and Death” (生死遺言) was a bestseller in Taiwan for 22 consecutive weeks. She married Harlem Yu (庾澄慶), also a
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famous Taiwanese singer and entertainer in 2000, but they divorced in 2009. Her extra-marital affair provided audiences with “narratives that have entertainment value” and was widely reported by mass media and discussed by the public. Thus, her identity as a celebrity is confirmed.
Secondly, Yi is a prolific blog writer and has been writing her blog for many years.
She operates her blog on platforms, which include Yahoo, Pixnet, Sina China and Sina Taiwan. The content of these platforms is basically the same. She has also registered accounts on Facebook and Sina’s Weibo, and most of the content on these social media platforms is copied from one platform to another. For example, her Facebook content is a mixture of her blog postings and her Weibo; her blogging content on Yahoo and Pixnet is transferred from Sina China, where the latest content of her blog is posted.
The research uses Yi’s extra-marital affair in 2008 as the specific event for analysis.
Yi’s image was seriously jeopardized because of her extra-marital affair. It first came under public scrutiny, when a photograph was taken of Yi in Beijing holding hands with another Taiwanese entertainer, Victor Huang (黃維德). The photos were clear and this became a big issue in Taiwan’s entertainment field. Since she was still a married woman when the photos were exposed in the Taiwanese press, it was like a bomb had exploded. Her identity as a celebrity further provoked serious criticism from the public and the media, reprimanding her for being an unfaithful wife. Since Yi did not come out and explain to the public in the first place, her social media became the major space for mass media to collect news. For these reasons, Yi is chosen as a suitable case to analyze.
The Apple Daily is chosen as a case study of the mass media. According to a survey conducted in 2010, the Apple Daily was chosen as the most read, most abundant, and most detailed newspaper in the Taiwanese press. It was established in Taiwan in 2003 and soon became one of the most popular newspapers. The average daily circulation of the Apple
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Daily is 570 thousand. Thus, the Apple Daily is chosen for its tabloid style and sensational news stories.
Due to the constraints of time and resources, specific blog sites and time segment are distinguished for data collection. When the extramarital affair broke out in 2008, the main blog sites Yi operated were based on Sina.com and Yahoo.com. However, many of her blogging contents in Yahoo were deleted after her affair. Thus, her Sina blogs are chosen as the main platform for a more complete data collection. Yi has two blogs in Sina.com, namely, Sina China (http://blog.sina.com.cn/yinengjing) and Sina Taiwan (http://blog.sina.com.tw/yinengjing/)2. All her blogging posts in the time segment will be copied and pasted to obtain the data.
As for Apple Daily’s report, a search engine based on the Apple Daily website (http://tw.nextmedia.com/index/search) will be used to search for news of Yi Neng Jing.
Since the search engine will list all the stories with the characters “Yi Neng Jing” in the text and headlines and some of them will not be related to the topic, news report not related to Yi’s extramarital affair will be filtered out. Only news reports that based on the affair will be collected.
Audiences’ opinions of Yi will be collected from the comments left in her blog in Sina China, where Yi’s blogging posts are the most complete. 200 comments will be chosen from the posts cited by Apple Daily. When the comments left in Yi’s blog are collected, only comments presented in the form of texts will be selected. Also, comments that obviously reveal their feelings to Yi will be purposefully chosen for analysis.
The time segment for the data collection is distinguished as being between
2 Sina China was going to be chosen as the only space for data collection, since it has the most complete data and is the main source of information for Taiwan’s reporters. However, it was found that some of Yi’s posts are only posted in Sina Taiwan, so in order to acquire as much data as possible, Sina Taiwan is also used for the data collection.
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2008/11/11~2009/4/30, which is six months after Yi’s extramarital affair broke out.