Journal of Electoral Studies

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The Image of the Presidential Candidates' Wives in the Newspapers

Chi-Tien Kuo and Song-In Wang
2001 / 11
Volume 8, No.2

pp.65-94
10.6612/tjes.2001.08.02.65-94
Paper

Abstract

This paper analyzes the image of the presidential candidates' wives, Lian Fang-yu, Wu Shu-zhen, and Chen Wan-shui, on newspapers during Taiwan's presidential campaign in 2000. This study employs content analysis to probe into the trend of the coverage and the image which was presented by three ladies, and the different coverage among four leading newspapers. For the amount of news coverage on them, ”Central Daily” covers most, and ”Liberty Times” covers least. ”straight news” is about 87.1% of the form of coverage, ”editorial” is about 8.6%, and ”interview” is about 4.3% .They appear mostly in the two subject categories: ”the political issues” and ”the activities participating or the schedules of public relations”. Moreover, there are significant differences in number of news article and image among four newspapers. The image of Lian: graceful, tender, ungracious, conservative, good at politics, poor at expressing, deep, active and positive, and popular. The image of Wu: ungraceful, tender, gracious, innovative, good at politics, good at expressing, deep, active and positive, and popular. The image of Chen: graceful, tender, gracious, innovative, good at politics, good at expressing, deep, active and positive, and popular.

Keywords

media image

presidential election

candidates' wives

Lian Fang-yu

Wu Shu-zhen

Chen Wan-shui