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.