Longitudinal Analysis of News about China in the US Media:
Changes Explained by World System Theory?”
Troy Knudson
PhD Student, Waseda University Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies
Working paper prepared for the Joint Workshop between Korea University andWaseda University, held at Waseda University, February 2008
Introduction
Since being introduced into scholarly discourse in the late 1950s (Schramm 1959), thedeterminants of coverage of foreign countries in the US news media have become wellinvestigated subjects of research inquiry for the field of international communication.
Most of the initial research made exclusive use of newspapers, while studies from thelast two decades have increasingly incorporated news magazines and television networknews as sources for investigation. Due to differences in how news is presented in print
and on television, some determinants regarding type and content of news have beenfound to be more compatible with one type of medium than the other. For example,
sensational visual images have been found to be more compatible with network news,
while detailed analyses are considered more compatible with newspapers and news
magazines. However, regarding the structural factors that determine which countries
receive coverage and which do not, there are some distinct cross-medium similarities.
The approach to this study, one such similarity bases the amount of coveragegiven to countries on the paradigm of the world economic system, which separates
countries into the three continual categories: periphery, semi-periphery, and core. Muchof the motivation for research that emphasizes this structural determinant has been thevisible lack of balance in coverage given to countries representing different categories(Chang 1998). These studies typically show that, despite the existence of other factors,
the amount of news coverage a country receives can be predicted by its position on theworld system continuum, which is commonly determined by indicators such as grossdomestic product or gross national income (Chang 1998; Chang, Lau, Xiaoming 2000;
Kim 1996; Golan 2008).
However, since the world system paradigm was first outlined in the mid-1970s,
one of the most important restructurings its parameters have undergone is theinclusion of a country’s potential to move up the continuum. This re-conceptualization
has altered the way scholars of international relations understand the influence271

individual countries have in world affairs. The new paradigm recognizes that certain
courses of economic action taken by developing countries in the periphery can increase
their respective influence.
Even though the world system paradigm has been applied to a number ofsophisticated studies on the determinants of coverage of foreign countries in the US
news media, the concept of inter-categorical mobility within the world system has notbeen worked in to the understanding of how these two variables are related. To address
this gap in the research, this study utilizes the economic rise of China, a phenomenon
that has been described as China’s ability to manufacture and export its way out of theworld system periphery and move to a more favorable position on the continuum as an
example of the potential for upward mobility. It is assumed that as China’s position on
the continuum moves upward, its status in the international equation and influence inworld affairs increases. It is hypothesized that the US news media responds byincreasing its coverage of China.
US News Coverage of China
This study draws from research on the determinants of foreign news coverage in the US
media. Because the study is part of a much larger research project on how thepresentation of China the US news media from the late 1980s to the present has attimes influenced US foreign policy toward China, two elite newspapers (New YorkTimes and Washington Post) were chosen as sources of data. However, for reasonsstated above, conclusions about how the world system paradigm fits into thedeterminants of international news in print and on television are used in the literature
review.
There is no lack of research criticizing the nature and scarcity of international
news in the US media. At the same time, it is well understood in the literature that USnews media gatekeepers have specific time and space limitations that render it
impossible to provide equal coverage to all nations around the world (Chang 1998).
Nevertheless, research on the space allotted for international news in bothtypes of media has shown that in general, the volume of international news in the US
media has been decreasing in recent years. Wu and Hamilton (2004) argue that evenafter the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US illustrated the necessity for the US
to strive for a better understanding of world affairs (which was noticeable temporarily),
the space occupied by international news in US newspapers succumbed to a quick
flagging of attention similar to previous national crises. Riffe and Budianto (2001)272

showed that in all three major US television networks, the amount of international
news coverage in relation to the amount of domestic coverage is decreasing. This study
argues that because of this trend in the US news media, when the coverage of a country
increases, examining the reason would help understand the theoretical intricacies ofthis trend.
To illustrate this argument, China is selected as a case of realized upward
mobility potential in the world system. It is no mystery that news coverage of China in
the US media has increased since the late 1980s. In a recent study, Stone and Xiao
(2007) showed that news coverage of China in three US news magazines increased after
the fall of the Soviet Union and became increasingly more negative. They approach
their study from the balance of power theory of international relations and argue that
“China has emerged as Russia’s replacement enemy in the US global power standoff.”
By looking at news coverage from two sets of five years before and after the 1989
Tiananmen Square incident (1984-1988 and 1995-1999), the incident is considered theevent that placed China in the context of US anticommunism, a position they argue tobe central to the US understanding of international relations, and a position formerly
occupied by the Soviet Union. The dominance of the anticommunist frame in the US
news media is also the subject of Akhavan-Majid and Ramaprasad’s (2000) study oncoverage of the Fourth UN Conference on Women and the NGO Forum on Women, bothof which were held in Beijing in 1995.
By looking at findings from the previous research, it becomes obvious that,even though international news in the US media has decreased as a whole, coverage ofChina has increased since the 1980s. It also seems that US news media gatekeepers
consciously select news for publication that employs an anticommunist frame in its
assessment of China. Stone and Xiao (2007) utilize the world system paradigm tocategorize both the Soviet Union and China as semi-peripheral countries. However,even though they consider China’s trade with the US an important predictor forcoverage about China, the capacity of China’s upward mobility within the system is notconsidered in their theoretical framework. Despite these important findings, China’s
relevance to the US is interpreted through ideological lenses. The increasing coverage ofChina coupled with its emphasis on anticommunism is viewed as a result of the US
news media’s objective to promote national unity.
Taking a different approach, this study emphasizes China’s upward mobility inthe world economic system as an alternative reason the increase in coverage given to
China in the US media. It is agued below that this upward mobility can be
operationalized by the increase in China’s total exports to the world. In addition to this273

variable, the highly significant correlation between China’s trade with the US and theamount of coverage about China found by Stone and Xiao is considered as a related
indicator of China’s relevance to the US. The increasing trade deficit that the US has
with China is also considered as another related indicator of variance, which – alongwith relevance to the US and position within the hierarchy of nations – is understoodwithin the literature to be a key determinant of the amount of coverage a country
receives in the US news media.
It is not uncommon for major shifts in the structure of international relations
to bring about a shift in how the determinants of international news coverage are
examined. Wu (2000) argues that the bipolar prediction framework for international
news during the Cold War has become outdated and needs to be reexamined. Golan(2008) argues in a similar way about the new international political paradigm
promulgated by the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. This study
argues that the rise of China over the last two decades, although a more graduallyunfolding event than the end of the Cold War and September 11 attacks, is alsochanging the structure of international relations. However, it is the gradual nature ofthis change that requires a type of analysis less common in studies of the determinantsof international news: a longitudinal regression.
The Determinants of International News Coverage
Research on the determinants of news coverage of foreign countries in the news media
can be traced back over four decades. In one of the first attempts to assess these
determinants, Galtung and Ruge (1965) identified twelve variables they considered
relevant for the four Norwegian newspapers they used as data sources: frequency,
threshold,intensity,

ambiguity,

meaningfulness,consonance,

predictability,

expectedness, continuity, composition, relevance, and negativity. Of these twelve, thevariable that has been most utilized in subsequent studies is the relevance of a country
being covered to the home country of the news publication (Hester 1973; Chang,
Shoemaker, and Brendlinger 1987). In another early study, Ostgaard (1965) found thatdomestic political and economic characteristics such as censorship and news media
ownership are important in considering which countries receive coverage in the world’s
four major news agencies (of that time): Agence France-Presse, Associated Press,
Reuters, and United Press International.
Hester (1973) took an international relations approach to the flow ofinternational news and other types of information, offering the first insight into the274thread of literature the present study addresses. Three important determinants
concluded from Hester’s research are the hierarchy of nations, cultural affinities
between countries, and economic association among countries. Hierarchical variables
include a country’s geographic size, population, level of economic development, andtenure of sovereignty. Cultural affinity variables include commonality of language
between countries, human migration between countries, and their historical
relationships. Economic association variables include level of international trade
between countries, amount of foreign aid given or received by a country, and amount offoreign direct investment between countries.
Regarding research done exclusively on US sources of news, Chang, Shoemaker,
and Brendlinger (1987) attempted to classify the determinants that had been found todate, and contributed with one of the literature’s most influential theoretical discoveries.
They argue, “What seems obvious is that the theoretical thinking can be grouped into
two categories: context-oriented versus event oriented, with the former being thedominant paradigm.” In short, event-oriented determinants focus on the nature of aninternational news event. Context-oriented determinants evaluate how the countries
involved perform within the international system.
Indeed, the world system approach to this field of research, which stems from
Hester’s (1973) context-oriented hierarchy of nations determinant, is one of theapparent leading sources of inspiration for much of the recent literature, including thepresent study (Chang 1998; Barnett 1996). However, one landmark event-oriented
finding relevant for this study is Shoemaker, Chang, and Brendlinger’s (1986)
examination of news coverage according to the construct of deviance. Their study argues
that news media gatekeepers implicitly select news for publication based on two factors.
One factor is the potential for social change deviance variable, which measures theextent an event threatens to alter the status quo of the country in which it occurs. The
other factor is the normative deviance variable, which is the extent an event would havebroken US norms if it had happened in the US.
Independent Variables
This study has two purposes. One purpose, as outlined above, is related to finding andtesting the appropriate determinants of coverage about China in the US news media inthe context of China’s upward mobility in the world economic system. In order tosynthesize this purpose with the relevant findings of the previous literature, three
independent variables are tested for their ability to predict three different aspects of275

how China is covered. The three independent variables are the total amount of Chinese
exports to the world, the total amount of trade between China and the US, and theamount of trade imbalance benefiting China in this trade relationship.
Gunaratne (2001) argues that unlike gross domestic product or gross national
income, which are commonly used to assess a countries position in the world system, thesize of a country’s exports represents its “ability to expand into the global economy on acompetitive basis.” This study thus assumes that exports to the world can be consideredan alternative yet relevant indicator of a country’s position in the world system. This
may especially be true for China, which has become renowned for its economictransformation through manufacturing and exporting. Indeed, in an economic sense,
China’s present status in the international equation is somewhat similar to other East
Asian countries that successfully exported their ways out of the periphery of the world
system. Thus, this variable stems from Hester’s (1973) hierarchy of nations
context-oriented determinant, and follows the proposal of Chang (1998) that the world
system paradigm should be incorporated as a theoretical framework for the study of thedeterminants of international news coverage. Figures for China’s exports to the world
were obtained from the World Trade Organization Statistics Database.
This study operationalizes China’s relevance to the US by measuring the total
amount of trade between China and the US. Regarding this variable’s relation to
China’s upward mobility, Urata (2007) argues that the final destination of China’s
exports to the world is Western Europe and the US. Since exporting is China’s vehicle
for upward mobility, China’s trade with the US is especially important to this means. As
shown above, the relevance of a country being covered to the home country of the
publication was one of the original determinants of coverage found by Galtung and Ruge
(1965). Hester (1973) conceptualized this type of relevance as part of the construct of
economic association between countries. In a study of news coverage of thirty-eight
countries, Wu (2000) found international trade to be a leading predictor of how muchcoverage a country receives. The relevance variable has also been operationalized inthis way by Shoemaker, Danielian, and Brendlinger (1991), Golan and Wanta (2003),
Stone and Xiao (2007), and Golan (2008). Figures for international trade between China
and the US were obtained from the US Census Bureau’s foreign trade statistics records.
In order to synthesize the concept of deviance with China’s upward mobility, it
is conceptualized differently than in most previous studies. Typically, deviance falls
under the event-oriented group of variables, as explained above in the discussion onsocial change deviance and normative deviance (Shoemaker, Chang, and Brendlinger
1986; Chang, Shoemaker, and Brendlinger 1987). This study considers the trade276

imbalance between China and the US as an example of context-oriented deviance. In
the US, this imbalance is usually referred to as the trade deficit with China. It is amajor source of economic and political debate within the US, and is thus consideredhere as a determinant of coverage of China in the US news media. The variable’s
relation to China’s upward mobility follows a logic that is similar to the relevancevariable’s relation. Put simply, the trade imbalance is a measurement of capital being
moved from the US to China. As more capital is moved, China’s capacity for upward
mobility increases. Figures for the trade imbalance between China and the US werealso obtained from the US Census Bureau’s foreign trade statistics records.
Dependent Variables
This study’s second purpose is more of a contribution to the methodology of this field of
research, which typically measures coverage by counting news items. Practically no
attention has been given to the location of news items within the entire news source, orto the amount of space these news items occupy. Because this study makes use of the

New York Times and the Washington Post as data sources, articles about China are theunit of analysis. However, the current study separates the commonly employeddependent variable of coverage into three separate variables: number of articles,
location of articles in the newspaper, and length of articles. In doing this, the current
study seeks to determine what aspect of coverage can be best explained by the
independent variables.
It is assumed that the number of articles variable requires no further
explanation since it is the dominant dependent variable in the field. However, regarding
the location of articles in the newspaper, the surface of the newspaper pages is
considered by this study as a kind of real estate. Articles that appear closer to the frontof the newspaper are more valuable than articles that appear in the back pages. It
should be commonsense that the most important news articles of a certain day appear
on the front page of the newspaper’s first section. Other important articles appear on
the front pages of other sections, which are more content specific and thus aim to attract
the interest of a specific kind of reader. Merely counting articles with no regard forwhere those articles appear in the newspaper neglects the very reason for having a front
page and organizing the newspaper into specialized sections.
Regarding the length of articles, the real estate metaphor remains applicable.
Most articles that are written for publication do not get published; they are discarded atsome point in the article selection process. Thus, the surface of the newspaper is a277

coveted space; the amount of space an article occupies is also representative of thearticle’s value. Furthermore, the length of an article signifies the depth into which thearticle covers the respective topic. In order for an article to breach the boundary
between factual news and analytical news, space is required. Thus, longer articles canbe considered to contain more analytical content and higher quality news.
Hypotheses
This study investigates how China is covered by two elite US newspapers between theyears 1988 and 2006. Based on the above synthesis of the study’s approach with thereview of the literature on the determinants of international news coverage into three
independent variables and three dependent variables, the following research questionand nine hypothesis are presented and predicted, respectively:

Research Question: What are the longitudinal characteristics of the coverage ofChina in elite US newspapers?

Hypothesis 1: The greater the level of China’s exports to the world, the more
articles will appear about China in elite US newspapers.

Hypothesis 2: The greater the level of China’s exports to the world, the better
position in elite US newspapers articles about China will occupy.

Hypothesis 3: The greater the level of China’s exports to the world, the longer
articles about China in elite US newspapers will be.

Hypothesis 4: The greater the level of China’s total trade with the US, the more
articles will appear about China in elite US newspapers.

Hypothesis 5: The greater the level of China’s total trade with the US, thebetter position in elite US newspapers articles about China will occupy.

Hypothesis 6: The greater the level of China’s total trade with the US, thelonger articles about China in elite US newspapers will be.

Hypothesis 7: The greater the level of the US trade deficit with China, the more
articles will appear about China in elite US newspapers.

Hypothesis 8: The greater the level of the US trade deficit with China, thebetter position in elite US newspapers articles about China will occupy.

Hypothesis 9: The greater the level of the US trade deficit with China, thelonger articles about China in elite US newspapers will be.

278

Methodology
The Lexis-Nexis portal was used to obtain articles about China from the New YorkTimes and Washington Post from the years 1988 to 2006. In order to ensure that eacharticle would be about China, the search was limited to articles that included a Chinesecity in the dateline. This means that each article retrieved was written in China,
presumably by a foreign correspondent stationed in China. Thus, it can be assumed thateach article was indeed about China.
The search was limited further to articles that included the word China at least
fifteen times. This procedure was taken in order to make the coding of the articles’
location and length more manageable. However, in the midst of coding, it was noticed
that this delimiting did not apply exclusively to the articles contents, but also included
the automatic geographic relevance function supplied with any article search on
Lexis-Nexis. Thus, some articles likely did not mention China fifteen times, but rather
mentioned something related to China that prompted the automatic function to respond.
However, this is not considered a limitation as more articles were likely retrieved,
resulting in more accurate data. The number of articles retrieved from each newspaperfor each year is shown in Table 1.

279

Table 1: Number of Articles
Year

New York Times

Washington Post

Total

1988

90

32

122

1989

110

68

178

1990

58

36

94

1991

112

44

156

1992

133

64

197

1993

131

50

181

1994

125

71

196

1995

121

90

211

1996

131

115

246

1997

116

92

208

1998

182

159

341

1999

205

171

376

2000

204

158

362

2001

152

125

277

2002

99

89

188

2003

129

102

231

2004

131

69

200

2005

213

61

274

2006

148

64

212

As explained above, each article retrieved was coded for its position in thenewspaper. Regarding newspaper position, a four-point scale was employed. A score offour was given to an article that appeared on the front page of the newspapers firstsection. A score of three was given to an article that appeared on the front page of any
other section of the newspaper. A score of two was given to an article that appeared on
any other page in the newspapers first section. A score of one was given to an article
that appeared on any other page of any other section of the newspaper. The average
location of articles for each year was taken to assess the longitudinal trend, which isshown on Table 2.

280

Table 2: Average Location of Articles

New York Times

Year

Washington Post

Total

1988

2.24

2.26

2.25

1989

2.51

2.53

2.51

1990

2.13

2.15

2.25

1991

2.19

2.22

2.21

1992

2.16

2.16

2.16

1993

2.27

2.30

2.28

1994

2.24

2.25

2.24

1995

2.42

2.43

2.42

1996

2.26

2.26

2.26

1997

2.37

2.39

2.39

1998

2.31

2.32

2.31

1999

2.27

2.28

2.28

2000

2.33

2.33

2.33

2001

2.64

2.64

2.64

2002

2.54

2.57

2.56

2003

2.42

2.41

2.42

2004

2.57

2.56

2.58

2005

2.28

2.28

2.28

2006

2.44

2.44

2.44

Each article was also coded for its length. A scaling method sensitive toincrements of 500 words was employed. Because the longest article retrieved was 5,728
words, a twelve-point scale was used, as shown in Table 3.
Table 3: Length of Article Scoring Scale
Words

Score

Words

Score

Words

Score

1-499

1

2,000-2,499

54,000-4,4999

500-99922,500-2,999

6

4,500-4,999

10

1,000-1,499

33,000-3,499

7

5,000-5,499

11

1,500-1,999

4

3,500-3,999

8

5,500-5,999

12

Due to the coding for both article location and article length being rather
straightforward, it was assumed that no additional coders were necessary to achieve
reliability. As was done with article location, the average length of articles for each year281was taken to assess the longitudinal trend, which is shown in Table 4.
Table 4: Average Length of Articles
Year

New York Times

Washington Post

Total

1988

2.30

2.30

2.30

1989

2.66

2.67

2.66

1990

2.41

2.44

2.44

1991

2.28

2.29

2.29

1992

2.30

2.31

2.30

1993

2.53

2.55

2.54

1994

2.40

2.40

2.41

1995

2.50

2.51

2.50

1996

2.47

2.47

2.47

1997

2.50

2.53

2.53

1998

2.40

2.40

2.40

1999

2.40

2.40

2.40

2000

2.48

2.47

2.47

2001

2.72

2.72

2.72

2002

2.83

2.87

2.86

2003

2.69

2.69

2.69

2004

2.89

2.89

2.90

2005

2.68

2.66

2.68

2006

2.69

2.70

2.70

Statistical Procedure
In order to maintain the standard of research on the determinants of international news
coverage, this study seeks to go beyond descriptive statistics and incorporate moresophisticated statistical procedures for predicting the three aspects of coverage of China
in the US news media. Indeed, at defining moments in this field’s literature, explicit
calls for such action have been made (Shoemaker, Chang, and Brendlinger 1986; Wu
2000). It is thus hoped that the present study contributes to the increasing
improvement of how coverage is both determined and defined.
In addition to descriptively examining the content analysis of the threedependent variables, Pearson correlations are used to measure the relationshipbetween these variables and each independent variable. This technique has become282

widely used in the recent literature, and is used here to test the nine hypotheses.
Furthermore, a longitudinal regression is used in order to predict coveragebased on the three independent variables. One of the common problems in applying thisstatistical method to news media analysis is that variables such as coverage and are notnormally distributed. It is typically considered that this problem can be overcome bylogging the variables (Wu 2000); Golan 2008), a technique this study also employs.
Results and Discussion
Table 1 lists the total number of articles about China appearing per year in eachnewspaper. The results indicate that the New York Times published more articles about
China than the Washington Post each year. On average, the Washington Post published
64% (ranging from 29% in 2005 to 90% in 2002) of the number of articles published by
the New York Times. However, even though consistently published more articles, thetwo newspapers increased and decreased their number of articles together. This finding
was not hypothesized, but a Pearson correlation of the two newspapers’ number ofarticles indicates a significant and relatively high correlation (0.670, p= 0.000). Because
the New York Times is considered to lean left and the Washington Post is considered tolean right, this correlation may indicate that the two newspapers are representative ofsome concept of the US news media in general regarding coverage of China.
A closer look at Table 1 reveals that both newspapers published more articles
in the years 1998 through 2001 than any other consecutive time period. It is beyond thescope of the present study to speculate about the content or nature of the articles fromthis four-year period. However, this observation does provide some useful insight for the
recent study by Stone and Xiao (2007), who intentionally did not code articles from theperiod 1989 through 1994 because of “dramatic changes” that might “skew news undernormal conditions.” To be sure, there were a much higher number of articles in 1989
than in 1988 or 1990, but such a major increase or decrease in the data does not appear
again until 1998. Nevertheless, this study intentionally does not exclude any years fromthe analysis because dramatic changes occur in many countries on a daily basis without
being covered by the US news media. If dramatic changes in China are covered, thereason is due to China’s perceived importance to the US.
Table 2 lists the average location within each newspaper of articles about China per
year. The results indicate that, even more so than the number of articles, article
locations within the two newspapers follow similar patterns. This may be anotherindication of a general concept of the US media’s coverage of China. Ultimately, more283

sources would need to be included to test such a construct. Interestingly, whencompared to the years that have the highest number of articles in Table 1 (1998-2001),
the local value of these articles follows an opposite trend. This means that even though
the two newspapers published more articles about China during this four-year period,
the articles did not appear in valuable locations within the newspaper. This is an
important finding for the second purpose of the present study, which is to improve theconceptualization of the dependent variable coverage in this field of research.
Table 4, which lists the average length of articles about China per year in eachnewspaper, supports the need for a re-conceptualization of coverage. In general, thedata follows a trend similar to Table 2 rather than Table 1. Specifically, between 1998
and 2001, the length of articles also follows an opposite trend when compared to thenumber of articles from this from this four-year period. Also similar to Table 2 is theobvious pattern shared by the two newspapers in the amount of space they allow
articles about China to occupy each year.
While the above description of results addresses the research question, thisstudy seeks not only to investigate the possible differences in three aspects of coverageof China in the US media. It was hypothesized that variables related to China’s upward
mobility in the world system will be identified as associated with these aspects ofcoverage. The results in Table 5 show the nature of correlation between the independentand dependent variables. Because the results from the descriptive data showed all
aspects of the two newspapers’ to be quite similar, the data from the two newspapers
was combined for the remaining statistical analyses. The Pearson correlation results
indicate highly significant correlations between each combination of variables except
China’s exports to the world and the number of articles published by the newspapers.
Thus, among the nine hypotheses, the first is the only one that cannot be accepted.
However, the levels of correlation vary greatly by combination, so the results should beanalyzed as such.

284

Table 5: Pearson Correlations between Independent and Dependent Variables
NumberLocation

LengthChina’s Exports

Pearson Corr.

0.225

0.391***

0.642***

to the World

Sig. (two-tailed)

0.172

0.000

0.000

US-China

Pearson Corr.

0.290***

0.496***

0.704***

Total Trade

Sig. (two-tailed)

0.000

0.000

0.000

Trade

Pearson Corr.

0.314***

0.429***

0.674***

Imbalance

Sig. (two-tailed)

0.000

0.000

0.000

*** Significant at the 0.001 level.
A comparison of the independent variables indicates that the relevancevariable (trade between the US and China) provides the highest levels of correlation
with coverage of China. The second highest correlations are provided by the deviancevariable (China’s trade imbalance with the US). The least correlated of the three is theworld system indicator (China’s exports to the world). Because the relevance anddeviance variables are most explicitly attached to the relationship between China andthe US, the results are not surprising even though this study aimed to show that, ingeneral, China’s upward mobility in the world system would attract more attention
from the US news media. However, the possibility that the world system indicator
would not be as highly correlated as the relevance and deviance variables is precisely
why the other two were included. We may conclude from these results that the uniquerole the US has in China’s upward mobility is more newsworthy than the mobility
alone.
A comparison of the dependent variables indicates that, by far, article length
provides the highest levels of correlation with the three independent variables. The
second highest correlations are provided by article location, and the least correlated of
the three is the number of articles. These are important findings regarding themethodology of research on the determinants of international news, which typicallyoperationalizes coverage only by the number of news items. It is hoped that thesefindings will shed some light on the possibilities that exist in defining news coverage. As
mentioned above, the length of articles indicates the space that an article is allowed tooccupy within the newspaper, as well as the depth of the writing. Location indicates thevalue of the space that an article occupies as well as the likelihood that the article will
be read and by whom it will be read. This finding is especially relevant for studies that
venture into the agenda setting capacity of the news media.
The final statistical analysis of this study is a multivariate longitudinal285

regression of each dependent variable. Because the analysis is longitudinal, the issue oftime is of primary importance; two sets of analysis were carried out to determine theeffect of time. Wu (2000) argued that when testing the impact of a variable such as tradeon the coverage given to a country in the news media, data from the same year
“cannot…logically infer an explanation.” Wu’s (2000) study employed trade data fromthe previous year to illustrate its impact on the next year’s coverage. This study argues
that the effect of an independent variable on news coverage may not take as long as afull year. However, since monthly data is not used, same year data as well as previous
year data are utilized to determine the impact of both by comparison. Table 6 lists theresults of the regression tests.
Table 6: Predicting Aspects of Coverage based on Independent Variables
Dep. V.

F

Adjusted R²

Previous year
0.015*

0.393

NumberSame year
0.000***

0.662

Previous year
0.086

0.216

Location
Same year
0.031*

0.324

Previous year
0.001***

0.604

LengthSame year
0.011*

0.417

Ind. V.

t-value

Sig.

Total Exports-0.4480.661

US-China Trade-0.1030.920

Trade Imbalance

0.939

0.363

Total Exports-3.8710.002**

US-China Trade

3.152

0.006**

Trade Imbalance-1.376

0.190

Total Exports-0.681

0.506

US-China Trade

1.273

0.222

Trade Imbalance-1.442

0.170

Total Exports-1.6660.116

US-China Trade

2.201

0.044*

Trade Imbalance-2.2130.428*

Total Exports-1.4340.172

US-China Trade

2.674

0.017*

Trade Imbalance-3.0730.008**

Total Exports-0.3920.701

US-China Trade

1.008

0.329

Trade Imbalance-1.201

0.248* Significant at the 0.05 level; ** Significant at the 0.01 level
A total of six multivariate longitudinal regression tests were carried out: one
using previous year independent variable data and one using same year independent
variable data for all three dependent variables. Same year data was more successful in286

predicting the variance in number of articles published and article location within thenewspapers. However, previous year data was more successful in predicting thevariance in length of articles. As explained above, the reason may have something to dowith the relation between article length and quality of writing. While the number ofarticles and their location may be more closely related to immediate factors of news
demand, the demand for quality news about an issue or event may take longer todevelop. However, such issues of demand are beyond the scope of the current study andshould instead be addressed by future research.
Comparing the predicted variance across dependent variables also indicatessome interesting findings. Even though number of articles showed the lowest Pearson
correlations with the independent variables, its significantly predicted variance bysame year data was the highest among the regression tests. This contradiction is likely
the result of interaction between the independent variables within the regression model,
as they are all related to China’s upward mobility within the world system. However,predictions themselves are not affected by such cases of multicollinearity. Nevertheless,employer a longer time series or a ridge regression analysis would likely yield lesscontradictory results, and are also best left to be addressed by future research.
Regarding the independent variables, trade between China and the US isshown to be the most statistically significant predictor of overall variance of thedependent variables. Same year data of this variable was statistically significant inpredicting the number of articles published about China by the newspapers as well as
their location within the newspapers. Furthermore, previous year data was statisticallysignificant in predicting article length. The US trade deficit with China was the second
most significant predictor. Previous year data for this variable was statisticallysignificant in predicting article length, while same year data was statisticallysignificant in predicting article location. The variable for China’s total exports to theworld was the least significant of the three predictors. However, along with total
US-China trade, this same year data of this variable was statistically significant inpredicting the number of articles published.

287

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