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

Juggalo Agenda Setting

I opened up the Onion newspaper and in the AV Club's "real" news section in the back there's an interview with Violent J from the Insane Clown Posse. I've been following ICP since the Tia Tequila incident at their Gathering of the Juggalo's Music Festival this summer so I gave the article a read. Violent J very eloquently, albeit with a peppering of four-lettered words, explains classic media framing theory.

They had their minds set on the story they were going to make before we even did the interview. It really didn’t even matter what we said. The whole reason they even did an interview with us was looking for lines or something to come out of our mouth that we can say to further make their point. We might have sat down for that hour, and we might have actually changed Martin Bashir’s opinion of us, but he wasn’t going to let that show. They knew the picture they were painting before we even fucking did that interview... They took what we said, and they turned the interview to make it to their point. But we filmed the interview as well, and we posted the whole thing up on our website... They talked about crime happening and about how some Juggalos have committed these crimes. We made the point that millions of people bought our albums, and out of millions of people, there is going to be some bad apples. I’m sure Barbra Streisand fans have committed crimes as well…. Things like that we talked about, and he just kept rephrasing the same questions. They were going for what they needed. They needed some blue in their picture, and they needed some green. No matter what we said, they were going to get what they needed to paint that picture...

J appeared on the news program Nightline with his rapping partner Shaggy 2 Dope earlier this year.  J accused Nightline of taking an agenda setting approach in producing the piece for air.  J says that Nightline edited the video of the interview so that his words were portrayed out of context.  Nightline alleges that ICP's violent lyrics cause its fans to commit murder.  ICP's view is that they are entertainers who are only interested in theatrical violence like professional wrestling or Stephen King novels.  However, as you can see from comparing the final report and the rough interview below, Nightline edited ICP's explanations out of their story.


Here's Nightline's final segment that aired:




And here is the full interview with ICPs opinions intact: