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2022.12.29 First attempt at the dissertation proposal

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2022.12.29 First attempt at the dissertation proposal

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Title: Research proposal for “Chinese news media's coverage of sudden disaster events and its impact on audiences - A case study of the Itaewon stampede in South Korea 2022”

I read and thought over and over about the summer semester course content and the directions given by the instructor, and I thought that using an event of interest as a case study would be a good entry point. So I chose the Itaewon stampede in Korea, which happened not long ago and became a worldwide sensation with its severity, and I read a lot of news reports about it.

At the time, I found that the Chinese media was covering this event at great length and that the matter was gaining a lot of attention among the Chinese public. In many of the news reports from China, the journalists or writers chose to describe it in a very emotional perspective or language.

I chose to use "distant suffering" as a theoretical lens, which was later pointed out as inaccurate by tutor Jennifer, who suggested I could read Wahl-Jorgensen's  work on the strategic ritual of emotionality.

Due to the ambiguity of the direction of the selected topic, I failed to think of a proper methodology at that time.

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2023.02.22 Second submission of dissertation proposal

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2023.02.22 Second submission of dissertation proposal

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Based on the feedback from my previous proposal, I chose to keep the case that interested me, but changed the direction of the study to the content of Chinese media coverage of disaster news, and chose the content of social media accounts of three news outlets as a sample.

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Throughout this time I have been puzzled by my choice of topic and have read the literature in an attempt to determine it. Based on the feedback of the proposal, I specifically read Wahl-Jorgensen's Journalistic Emotional Strategies.

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2023.03.29 First meeting with the supervisor

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2023.03.29 First meeting with the supervisor

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My supervisor is Tracey Potts. I emailed her my proposal and a summary of my ideas and questions before the meeting.

During the meeting, Tracey had obviously had a good look at my dissertation question, and together we settled on a methodology of textual analysis.

Tracey suggested that I do a coding sheet for the research sample to distinguish whether there were similarities or differences in the patterns of each article or each news outlet.

We had a very pleasant and productive meeting.

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I resubmitted the Ethics declaration form and was approved.

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During this period, I organized the sample to be researched, read the relevant literature, started thinking about the structure of the dissertation, made a plan for writing the dissertation and started writing.

I have begun to consider the idea of broadly categorising my research topics into the following research areas: news framing, news value and news emotion strategies. Then I learnt about the history of research in these areas and noted down important findings.

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2023.06.23 Second meeting with the supervisor

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2023.06.23 Second meeting with the supervisor

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At the meeting, I described my plan to Tracey and presented the structure of my dissertation, including a small draft, and Tracey provided some useful suggestions. She said that I could write a literature review first, so that I could clarify my thoughts. And she thought I would need more theoretical basis for my research. My topic is about China, but she indicated that I am doing research in the English field, so I should try to use English references.

I appreciated her advice and she thought I was doing a good job on my dissertation, which gave me great encouragement.

We also discussed some ideas about disasters, such as the idea that natural disasters might not exist because human strength could largely prevent them.

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During this time, During this time I read a lot of material and wrote the first draft of the literature review, which I sent to tutor and made an appointment to meet.

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2023.07.26 Third meeting with the supervisor

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2023.07.26 Third meeting with the supervisor

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In this meeting, I described my current thoughts on the literature review and research methodology.

My research question is the framing of disaster reporting articles posted on social platforms by Chinese news media. The research gap is the framing of disaster news posted on social platforms.

Tracey asked me a follow-up question about why I chose this research question and why it is a disaster. My answer was that there is a new trend in the media to post stories on social media platforms and I thought it made sense to look into it. A disaster is an unusual event, plus it usually attracts a lot of attention from the media and people, so it gets more complete coverage.

She also mentioned that within the literature review, I should focus more on disaster reporting and not get carried away from the original direction by too much knowledge. She suggested that I could do some mind mapping to sort out my logic and thoughts.

In terms of research methodology, I chose thematic analysis and critical discourse analysis, and I'm happy that Tracey had no problem with this choice.

I would then revise my literature review in an effort to show the focus of the dissertation. Then move on to write the methodology and analyses following the existing ideas.

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2023.08.22 Findings and Discussion draft

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2023.08.22 Findings and Discussion draft

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During this time, I read a lot of literature, figured out the process of research methods, and carried out sample translation, coding and organizing themes. Immediately afterwards, I wrote findings and discussions according to the results. And sent it to the supervisor by email.

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2023.08.25 Final meeting with the supervisor

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2023.08.25 Final meeting with the supervisor

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Before this meeting, I emailed tracey my 3,000 word draft of the FINDING and ANALYSIS section. She started with a few suggestions for this document:

1. She thought that my descriptions of figures 3 and 4 in this section were not clear enough and that it would be better to add some explanations. She suggested that when I look at my writing, I should always think of the fact that the reader may be someone who is completely unaware of the topic, so my language needs to always take care of the reader.

2. She thought I categorised my topics pretty well, but also needed to add more explanation. The examples given might be better understood by the reader with some explanation added.

3. Regarding the emotion part of the paper, I mentioned that I didn't think it felt appropriate to CDA, but Tracey felt that emotion is also packed with power relations everywhere, so we spent a bit of time discussing that part. She gave the example of gender power. The media are the ones who put out information and are often perceived as impartial and containing no emotion, so when they describe emotion they often describe the emotions of others, and there are subtle power positions that can be explored as well.

4. She provides an example of reporting that contains strong emotions: Herb Morrison - Hindenburg Disaster, 1937

5. She also suggested that I could use the "read aloud" function on the Word to listen to my own paper to see if there was any inappropriate use of language.

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My first draft was done on this day. In the next few days, I plan to read the full text and continue to revise the content and language, after all, my mother tongue is not English. There are also covers, contents, formats, appendices, etc. that need to be sorted out.

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Over the week, I revisited the entire text, revising much of the language used and correcting grammatical errors. I then added a cover page, a table of contents, and appendices. The thesis was finally submitted.