Individual Final project Progress Report 3

To do comparison in our final project, we also distribute our survey questions to some NCU students who had joined cross-Strait exchange programs. Our target NCU students would be those who study in the related spheres as the mainland-China exchange students. We proposed to receive all their results last weekend; however, not all of them sent it back on time. Thus, we are still urging them to send back their responses.

As for the mainland students, we gathered all the ten survey responses back from them last weekend and singled out those we think useful in our project. Therefore, we take 8 of their responses as the bases of our discussion, and each of our group members takes 2 out of the 8 responses as individual discussion. The result of the survey might be affected by their personal habits and experiences, or regional differences, and some of their responses are unexpected results.

In my two selected survey results from the mainland students, there are no big changes in their impressions of Taiwan after they joined the exchange program. Their main TV source of Taiwan news is China Central Television (CCTV), which is the official TV station in mainland China. Thus, they could not take pro-independence news reports in Taiwan easily, and regard all those reports are prejudices against China; even, they criticize pro-independence reports for misleading public opinions.

We originally think that the mainland students would think the press freedom enjoyed by Taiwanese people is also favorable to them; that is, there are much less restrictions on the news from the government. However, to our surprise, they think their TV media are still better than Taiwan’s TV media. The environment of Taiwan’s TV media, in their opinions, tends to be chaotic, and many of the reports are not “truth” at all. Besides, we at first assumed that they do not think Taiwan is a lovely island due to the fact of government oppositions in the past; yet, they all say that “寶島” is how they are used to refer to Taiwan.

Individual Final Project Progress Report 2

After the presentation in the class last Wednesday, our group project still needs much revision. Firstly, the target issue is not specific enough. It would be too broad an issue if we still focus on how the mass media construct the exchange students’ (who are from mainland China) conceptions of Taiwan. Therefore, we decide to narrow the mass media down to the TV media, and change our topic to “How the TV Media Constructs the Mainland Exchange Students’ Conceptions of Taiwan.”

Secondly, the questions we originally proposed to put in our surveys are not well constructed and arranged. We should have avoided Yes-No questions in case the questions would be stopped if they answer NO. We had a meeting on the next day with an exchange student, and asked for her opinions on our survey questions. She singled out the answerable questions and we did some revision on those questions to make them more specific. Also, we decide to offer the survey questions in English to the exchange students, so we did the translations after the revision.

After the meeting with her, we revised our survey questions as follows;
1. a. What province of Mainland China do you come from?
b. What university in Mainland China do you study in?
c. What is your major?
2. What local TV channel do you mostly watch?
3. Have these TV channels reported news about Taiwan?
4. Based on the previous question, in what kind of TV news do you take the most interest ? (Politics, economy, culture, etc.)
5. In Mainland China, what types of TV programs from Taiwan are broadcast in local TV stations? (Variety show; Political talk-show, etc.)
6. Amongst all the Taiwan-related TV programs produced by local TV companies, what issue appeals to you most?
7. Before you come to Taiwan, how do local TV stations form your impression of Taiwan?
8. What is the most impressive part do you find in Taiwan’s news media? Why?
9. After you have access to Taiwan’s TV media, what has been changed in your impression of Taiwan?
10. In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of Taiwan’s TV media to accustom to?

Individual Final Project Progress Report 1

Our final project is about how the exchange students in the NCU, who are from the Chongqing University (CQU) in China, build up their conceptions of Taiwan. Due to the fact that our conceptions of students from mainland China are mainly constructed by the mass media, we are now able to get first-hand information about what affects their conceptions of Taiwan. The purpose of this project is to understand how they think about Taiwan before and after they join the exchange program. We will start from how they gain information most frequently, and then analyze the result we get.

We propose to conduct a survey to attain the information needed. The questions in the survey may include two big aspects: the media sources and how these sources work upon their conceptions of Taiwan. We will offer 10 exchange students specific questions to delve into further details. From what media sources (radio, TV programs, TV news, newspaper, magazines, etc.) do they get the most information? In what field is the information about Taiwan they receive most frequently? Since they have been in the NCU for months, we would also ask them whether their conceptions of Taiwan have changed after their coming to Taiwan, and in what relation. If they encounter something challenging, how do they adjust to it? Besides, when they receive pieces of information which are totally different from what Chinese official media report, how do they think about it?

We are going to offer the survey questions in Chinese and to translate the result into English. Also, we will conduct a similar survey, which means we will change the subjects in the questions, on 10 of our classmates to understand how their conceptions of China are constructed. Further, we will try to compare the results from the two sides to find out possible reasons for the similarities and differences attained from the survey.