Media Freedom in China: State, Society and Culture : A Comparative case study of Press Freedom between China and Taiwan

Sammanfattning: Freedom of speech is a fundamental human rights. In Article 19 of United Nations  Declaration of Human Rights declared “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”   China claims that the citizens of People’s Republic of China have the right of freedom of speech in Chinese current Constitution. However, Chinese journalists are barely able to express news freely, and the media freedom has become to a serious problem in modern China. On the other hand, Taiwan’s media freedom is considered to be the best in Asia according to Freedom House.   In this thesis, the author will research media freedom in China through a comparative case study, where the differences between Chinese and Taiwanese media will be explored. The thesis looks at how Chinese and Taiwanese media practice media freedom and how the Chinese media is constrained.     As a comparative case study, Chinese and Taiwanese media reports on the Mong Kok civil unrest in 2016 is used since the events in Hong Kong are of interest to both sets of media. Both quantitative and qualitative research method was used to do the data collection, and in analysis of the cases, critical discourse analysis is applied along with Trilling’s three models.   The research shows that the Chinese and Taiwanese media displayed obvious differences in their reporting of the Mong Kok civil unrest, they have different news quantities, article size, photo usage, news angle, key messages and thematic structure, as well as the means of expression. According to the analysis of these differences, the Chinese media freedom was limited to a great extent. In addition, the Chinese media was socially constrained by the deep-rooted sense of Democratic Centralism and Confucian value both in national leaders and citizens.