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issues and relationship network, a wider broad of interpretations would be explored wider panorama on socialcultural aspect (Stewart et al., 2006).
Along with the emerge of Web 2.0, social media was born as the newly type of media in a decade. Also, it made the existence of digital-native media on the basis of mutual engagement.
Scholars of semantic analysis started their journey on intermedia contents (e.g. social media vs. online news media) (Billard, 2019; Yoon & Chung, 2018; Jiang, Barnett & Taylor, 2016;
Yoon & Chung, 2018; Neuman et al., 2014) or social media messages (Liu, Lai & Xu, 2018).
Neuman and his colleagues (2014) explored the framing of 29 political issues between traditional and social media with big data, and proved the mutual relationship of the two media agenda setting.
Based up these previous studies, this research would investigate salient issues of intermedia contents, in order to explore the framing, agenda setting in different type of media upon one specific issue. Further, as far as the current understanding from previous studies, little studies mixed framing and semantic network analysis to investigate slant on news media. To make this breakthrough, not only this study would utilize semantic way to sketch up the salient concepts through network analysis upon the designated issue, but also further explore the partisan slant of news media.
2.6. Shenao’s Project and Politics in Environmental News Frames
The shortage of electricity is an urgent but long existing problem in Taiwan. On 15 August, 2017, a massive power blackout occurred, in which the five-hour long blackout affected 151 companies and caused the loss of 2.89 million US dollars (Yu, 2017). The giant power blackout
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marks the electricity outage and the urgent scenario in Taiwan’s energy policy, as the president, Tsai Ing-wen, planned to phase out nuclear power by 2025, and initiate an energy transition plan to build new electricity-generating plants using renewable sources (“A Massive Blackout,”
2017). In 2018, Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) announced to expand and reopen the
“Shenao thermal power plant”, to meet the sustainability and security of electricity supply, as in the transition period of energy plan for renewable sources (Ministry of Economics Affairs, 2018).
Shenao thermal power plant, located in New Taipei City, had operated since 1960 and was decommissioned in 2007, which was once the biggest power plant in South Asia (Ministry of Economics Affairs, 2011). The expansion project of Shenao power plant was opposed by environmental groups and local residents due to the concerns of air pollution and harm to marine lives, despite the approval of environmental impact assessment review by Government (Liao, 2018; Greenpeace, 2018; DeAeth, 2018). In April 2018, the KMT proposed a referendum petition to oppose the Shenao power plant (Central Election Commissions, 2018a;
Lin, 2018b). The question asked people whether they agree the energy policy of stoping any new construction or expansion of any coal-fired power plant — including the Shenao Power Plant (Central Election Commissions, 2018b).
The referendum of Shenao power plant issue is part of the multi-question referendum in Taiwan local election in 24 November, 2018, where voters decided their community-level leaders. Also, people voted for 10 referendum questions, involving issues of energy policy, same-sex marriage, gender equity education, name of usage in international events, etc (“The 10 Referendum Questions”, 2018).
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In the end of June, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) officially announced that the project of Shenao power plant expansion was approved by environmental impact assessment review. On July 9, several environmental NGOs, (including Anti-Shenao Power Plant Self-Help Group, Environmental Rights Foundation, Wild Heart Taiwan, Greenpeace, and so on) initiated a protest nearby Executive Yuan, appealing to withdraw the Shenao power plant project for air equality and ecological protections (Wild Heart Taiwan, 2018; Lin, 2018a;
Chang & Teng, 2018). Also, New Taipei City Government also filed an administrative appeal to oppose the Shenao power plant expansion project few days later (Huang, A., 2018).
On October 12, a month before the referendum (November 24), Taiwan premier announced that the government was calling off the Shenao power plant expansion project, as the third liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Taoyuan would supply the original demand of electricity (Teng, 2018). Four days ago, on October 8, LNG terminal in Taoyuan passed the environmental impact assessment, and the deputy director of the Environmental Protection Administration resigned then (Teng, 2018). The scrapping of Shenao power plant project was seen as the consideration of the votes of election in 24 November (Apple Daily, 2018). As the election in 2018 was considered a prelude for the presidential election in 2020, the ruling party DPP (pro-independence of Taiwan) was expected to face tough challenges from the opposition KMT (pro-reunification with China) (Aspinwall, 2018). The project was interpreted as a strategy between the politics game between KMT and DPP in several local news (ETtoday News, 2018; Hsu, 2018; Chang, 2018). News outlets of Shenao power plant showed politics struggle and conflict between KMT and DPP, despite being an environmental issue. The project was interpreted as a strategy between the politics game between KMT and DPP in several local
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news (ETtoday News, 2018; Hsu, 2018; Chang, 2018). Table 1 showed main events of Shenao power plant issue. This research considered the EPA’s official announcement on June 28, 2018, as a crucial starting point that Shenao power plant expansion project approved by environmental impact assessment review. As such, June 28 would be the starting point for the time frame of the analysis in this study. From this time, the government officially announced the agreement of Shenao power plant project. Besides, the time frame of analysis was set to end by November 30, 2018, 6 days after the referendum occurred.
Besides the partisan conflicts of Shenao power plant issue suggested in news outlets, news frame of political conflict or strategy in environmental issues was analyzed and discussed in past studies (Bolsen & Shapiro, 2018; Nisbet, 2010; O’Neill, Williams, Kurz, Wiersma &
Boykoff, 2015). News frames of political conflict or strategy in environmental issues (such as climate change, or international environmental summits) highlighted the conflicts among elites or political actors, such as winners or losers in political strategies, or battles of groups as games behind policies (Nisbet, 2010; Bolsen & Shapiro, 2018). As for Shenao power plant issue, as an environmental issue, local news outlets also depicted political conflicts between political parties, suggesting that project was interpreted as a politics game due to the policy change and the criticism between KMT and DPP (ETtoday News, 2018; Hsu, 2018; Chang, 2018). As Bolsen and Shaprio (2018) suggested, political actors, journalists and advocacy groups would make their effort to generate consensus, in order to aggregate strong public support for actions or policies. For this concern, as shown in news outlets upon Shenao’s issue, political conflicts would use as the strategy for stronger public consensus to support or boycott related actions.
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Along with the previous studies and local news outlets, Shenao power plant project, as an environmental issue tied with partisan leaning among news media, was designed in this study. Combined with the research intention of media slant, this research chose the referendum as a case to observe news selections and slant on the basis of an environmental issue. This research would not only analyze the news media contents, but also the posts from political actors, including the politicians or political organizations of two political parties, and environmental groups speaking for Shenao power plant (e.g. Environmental Rights Foundation, Wild Heart Taiwan, Greenpeace) on Facebook. It would not include the “Anti-Shenao Power Plant Self-Help Group”, one of the environmental groups initiating the anti-Shenao power plant, as the Facebook fan page was closed. In order to understand what was discussed in different media (social media and news media) and communication roles under Shenao power plant issue, the comparison and observations on frames and salient concepts among news media, and political actors, environmental groups on social media becamethe first focus in this study. Exploring the partisan slant of news media would be the second focus in this research. The semantic networks made of KMT/DPP political actors’ Facebook posts would be utilized as the parameter to measure the partisan slant in different types of news media. In addition, the semantic network made of Facebook posts from environmental groups would be used as another parameter. Although measuring the network correlation between environmental groups and news media was not the main research purpose in this research, adding the environmental semantic network as another parameter would help to observe how the discourse of news media correlated to the partisan discourse.
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Events of Shenao Power Plant Issue
Date Event
March 14, 2018 Analysis of the environmental impact of Shenao Power Plant approved by Government through committee votes
April 16, 2018 Anti-Shenao power plant press conference held outside Legislative Yuan by anti-Shenao power plant local groups and DPP and NPP legislators
April 24, 2018
KMT legislators started a referendum signature to oppose the construction or expansion of any coal-fired power plant (Shenao power plant included)
June 28, 2018 EPA official announcement: Shenao Power Plant Expansion Project Approved by Environmental Impact Assessment Review
July 9, 2018 Environmental NGOs initiated a protest and appealed for withdrawing the Shenao power plant expansion project
July 18, 2018 New Taipei City Government filed an administrative appeal to oppose the Shenao power plant expansion project
October 8, 2018 The third liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Taoyuan passed the environmental impact assessment
October 12, 2018 Taiwan premier announced to call off Shenao power plant expansion project
October 24, 2018 EPA revoked the Environmental Impact Assessment Review
November 24, 2018 2018 Taiwanese Referendum
*Note: EPA=Environmental Protection Administration; DPP= Democracy Progress Party; KMT=Kuo-Ming-Tang; NPP= New Power Party
(Ministry of Economics Affairs, 2018; Liao, 2018; DeAeth, 2018; Lin, 2018b; Central Election Commissions, 2018a)
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CHAPTER III METHOD
This research conducted content analysis with computer-assisted semantic network analysis (SMA). SMA is an approach to visualize text analytics, and build up relationship term networks for the framing analysis. It could provide both quantitative and qualitative research sights as the quantitative metrics are basis of constructing text models, and would support qualitative analysis on salient issues in networks (Drieger, 2013). The research questions and research design (Figure 1) are as follows:
RQ1: What are the salient concepts in semantic networks of different types of news media (online traditional news media, digital-native news media) and Facebook posts from KMT and DPP political actors, and environmental groups on the Shenao power plant issue?
RQ2: What are the partisan leaning of (a) the two types of news media (traditional news media and digital-native news media) (b) each news media brand, labelled as DPP or pro-KMT news media by means of semantically correlated with Facebook posts from political actors with DPP or KMT party stance?
RQ3: What are the salient concepts in semantic networks of labelled pro-DPP or pro-KMT news media through semantic network correlation analysis with Facebook posts?
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Figure 1.
Research Design