Cutting Out the Story: China's Kindergarten Slashings

School knifings Janghuai newspaper front page.

Research Question:

How does media censorship affect what the audience perceives as important?

Case Background

Second school stabbing newspaper illustration

On May 15, 2010 a man wandered into a kindergarten in Shaanxi province, China and stabbed 29 children and three teachers with a knife.  Seven children were killed and another 20 were seriously injured.  This was not an isolated incident.  Since March there have been four other unrelated stabbings in kindergartens across the country.  China had previously been regarded as a relatively safe country with low rates of violent crime, but the attacks have created concerns about how the country deals with the mental health and the social welfare of its citizens.

Later newspapers ran headlines about school security

            Also in question is how the state media chose to cover the events.  In the earlier incidents the Chinese news was explicit in its coverage of the knifings after 15 students and one teacher were injured in an attack in a Guangdong school on April 28th.  The story made front-page headlines and included graphic photos and sketches depicting what took place.  The very next day 29 children were injured in a school-stabbing spree in Jiangsu province.  The newspapers wrote very little about the event, but instead filed stories about the measures that China’s schools were taking to beef up their security.  Chinese academics initially argued that this approach would discourage copycat killers who read about the attacks in the news.  However,  the government delivered a notice to reporters instructing them how to write about the knifings.

SIDA Media Notice

 

ATTENTION: 

In regards to the Taixing Kindergarten Injury Incident, notice has been received from higher levels that Xinhua reports are to be uniformly adopted. In light of the World Expo opening, this news shall not be placed on the front page for the time being.

Shanghai World Expo Opening Fireworks

The state authorities don’t seem to want the “sensationalized” kindergarten coverage in the media to overshadow the larger event of the Shanghai World Expo that will run till the end of October.  However, on May 30^th, one day after the Jaingsu incident and one day before the Expo opening, the trend of school violence continued.  A man in Shandong province assaulted five children with a hammer.  Then the fifth and final attack came when seven children were killed in Shaanxi on May 15^th.

Shaanxi Murder Weapon

Theoretical Perspectives

Critical Theory

First we chose to analyze the situation from a critical theoretical perspective. Critical theory is useful when critiquing one group’s use of media and texts to manipulate another group. In the case of the China knifings, we focused on the Chinese government’s censorship of the media, arguing that its suppression of the coverage of knifings was a deliberate move intended to maintain the status quo by stifling public speculation and unrest centered around the possible motives of the knifings (lack of support for the mentally ill, social inequity, poor school security, and the lack of recourse for frustrated citizens being among the most commonly cited issues we read.)

When we performed a content analysis of Chinese and Western news articles, blogs, and propaganda notices we observed that the government had indeed mandated reduced coverage of the school violence, shifting the focus first to improved school security measures (several government officials were quoting touting this) and then to the glory of the approaching Shanghai Expo. We believe that this shift in coverage was designed to reinforce the state-controlled hegemony; the Chinese government wanted its people – and the external world as well – to view to view it as a safe and prosperous nation untroubled by simmering social inequity or any of the other negative issues coverage of the school knifings seemed to have temporarily exposed." 

Saanxi Murder Scene

Agenda Setting 

The other theory we chose was agenda setting, which is used to examine media and the selection of news that are communicated to the public to be important or salient. Saliency, which is defined as relevancy and importance, is depicted through the quantity and the content of news stories. Chinese media is shaped by the country's government.  We identified it as the "agenda setter" in our study.  The state media reported on the knifings indirectly (improvements in school security), rather than giving attention to negative messages (such as social inequity, mental illnesses, societal backlash, and the connectedness of school knifings). When the knifings occurred close to the opening of the Shanghai Expo the Chinese media made security the most salient  issue in its stories.  Direct coverage of the knife violence was believed to have created insecurity and fear in Chinese citizens.  

We also looked at the possible affect that China-based American media, Chinese bloggers, and other Western media had on the Chinese public's perceptions of saliency.  Systemic agenda setting was not as pronounced when the Chinese-based American media covered the stabbings. It is not clear how, to what extent, or if Western media has reached Chinese citizens, nor is it clear what Chinese citizens view as important.

Bloodstains- Taixing Kindergarten

Questions to Consider

• How far is should a state be allowed to exercise its hegemonic power to promote greater ideological or economic interests? 

• Is there ever a time when an agenda is set by a government institution or media organization that is beneficial to society?

• Considering school shootings in America, do you think allowing media coverage about school shootings or knifings might contribute to the copycat effect?

• What factors should be considered when reporting on crimes in relation to the government, culprits, victims, and citizens? 

Chinese kindergartners at the scene of the crime

Carrie, Anna, Jean-Pierre