Research on the Foxconn Jumps

As briefly recounted earlier, the Foxconn jumps refer to a series of suicides by the company’s employees in 2010 mostly by leaping from buildings of the company’s plants in Shenzhen. Ever since the Foxconn jumps happened in the beginning of 2010, discussions have mushroomed, approaching the incident from a variety of

perspectives, ranging from labor, national development, organizational culture,

psychological analysis, etc. Soon after the news hit the headlines, a research team was formed to prepare an investigative report into the event, and published, after a

three-month investigation, The Serial Jumps behind Foxconn's Success (富士康輝煌 背後的連環跳). Researchers, including over 60 professors and students in sociology

and journalism on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, traveled to 12 plants in 9 cities in China to collect data by giving questionnaires, or conducting in-depth interviews. To accomplish the task, some of these investigators sneaked into the production lines in disguise as workers. The report bluntly blames the suicides on the company’s poor management system and the unfair treatment in terms of workers’ lives, occupational security and rights. Other publications, such as Why Do They Kill Themselves (他們為 什麼自殺), analyzed the tragedies from sociological, economic and enterprise

management perspectives. Amid all the academic discussions, media’s role in this serial event is also the target for debate.

Examining the news coverage of the Foxconn jumps, researchers in China argued that media’s overemphasis on the jumps may enlarge the event itself and further leads to unexpected and negative effects on readers (Chen, 2010; Liu, 2010a).

For example, the phrase media used to describe the jumps, “lien tiao” or “lien huan tiao” (連跳;連環跳), meaning consecutive jumps or serial jumps, emphasizes on the feature of being a “consecutive” event. The term, which carries negative implications, is likely to enforce public’s expectation for more jumps or may even trigger Werther Effect.

While scholars worry about the misuse of terms in news, how media approach the Foxconn jumps also sparks a spate of controversies. Chen noted that some media covered the event in a rather supernatural way (Chen, 2010). By relating the tragedy to “fengshui (風水 or geomantic) ”, a kind of ancient Chinese law that quotes from astronomy and geography to help one improve life. Others attributed it to supernatural power with the use of sensational words as “spell”, “obsession” and “devils of

dreams”. The atmosphere of “mystery” appeals to readers, yet at the same time it also sparks greater public panic and disgraces the journalistic profession.

Addressing the frame of Foxconn in news, Liu (2010b) argued that as the theme, “fight with death”, always guarantees circulation, it becomes one of the most used frames when covering protests involving the use of extreme methods, namely, death. In the researcher’s view, the case of Foxconn suicide jumps demonstrates the frame as well. Liu (2010) noted that as there is no specific evidence associating the consecutive jumps with the company’s treatment toward the workers to date, Chinese media created the link between the two by accusing the company of being a “blood and sweat company” and exploiting workers’ right with the unfriendly working environment and system ever since the very beginning of the incident without exploring the motivation and other related labor issues. The coverage is being so sensationally treated and twisted that those who committed suicide appear to be the heroes who fight against social injustice with death.

In this case, death is used to highlight the “brave fight” against power, while people who committed suicide are always portrayed as tragic heroes. Yet, the frame seems to oversimplify the complex nature of human’s life as it usually fails to look into the story of each suicide and explore the exact reason (Liu, 2010b). In the end, the dead becomes the object of sensation.

To sum up, ever since the Foxconn suicide jumps hit the headlines, discussions from different fields have mushroomed to examine the incident from different angles.

In the sociological field, scholars formed a task force, carrying out investigation reports that blame the suicides on the company’s poor management system and the unfair treatment in terms of workers’ lives, occupational security and rights. In addition, media’s performance on the incident also grabbed academic attention.

Chinese communication researchers looked into the news frames in media to cover this event and found that some of them were not so appropriate, resulting in

misleading the audience and eventually becoming a panic trigger.

Reviewing research on the Foxconn suicide jumps identifies two major categories. One is investigation by scholars to examine the company’s management issue, which would often be extended to cover labor’s situation in contemporary China. The other is about how media cover this event, mostly from the angle of suicide news. While previous research mainly drew upon business issue and suicide news, the present research tries to differentiate itself from the two by analyzing the incident from the perspectives of labor news. Therefore, this thesis aims to examine how media establish the image of workers and employers to see if any pattern exists.

The thesis intends to make sure contributions to the research of labor in news, a long-forgotten topic in communication field.

Furthermore, research about media’s coverage of the incident is so far mostly from Mainland China. In Taiwan, little research works with systematic analysis on the incident can be found. Therefore, with the hope of complementing what has been missing in the academic circle and providing the public with a more thorough and systematic insight into the Foxconn jumps from a media perspective, the present research examines how the four dailies in Taiwan frame the incident and how they present labor issue in news.