DEPARTMENT OF Psychology Professor Cristina Montiel, PhD delivered a lecture entitled “Comparing International Media Reports of Scarborough Shoal: Domestic News in the Philippines, China and United States” on September 29 at the 5th floor of the New Rizal Library.
The lecture was divided into a discussion of two studies. The first study focused on how respective domestic media reports affect Philippines and China in its perception of the dispute on the Scarborough Shoal.
On the other hand, the second study revolved on how opinion-based articles from the United States, Philippines, and China portray one another in the context of the dispute.
According to Montiel, the issue on Scarborough Shoal dispute re-erupted in April 2012 when China sent patrol ships to the island after discovering that the Philippine Navy inspected a Chinese fishing vessel within the vicinity.
Public perception
Montiel describes the first research as “multidisciplinary study,” since there were diverse fields of expertise within the team of researchers.
Department of Information Systems and Computer Science Chair Marlene de Leon, PhD, Department of Political Science Professor Alma Salvador, PhD and Chinese Studies Program faculty member Daisy See were the other members of the research team.
In this study, Montiel and her research team tried to discover how different the Chinese reports are from the Filipino reports regarding the dispute.
The team used news reports as data from two influential newspapers namely, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and People’s Daily.
According to Montiel, the reports they gathered were from April to May 2012 since it was then when the conflict was at its peak.
They were able to collect 55 and 57 articles from the Philippine Daily Inquirer and People’s Daily, respectively.
From the collected reports, the team made use of a text mining software, RapidMiner, to gather qualitative data revealing that there is a significant difference between how the Philippines and China present the issue.
Furthermore, the team analyzed the qualitative data deeper by looking into the storylines of each of both countries’ reports.
According to Montiel, the results show that the storylines of Philippine reports deal with recent history while the Chinese reports focus on ancient history.
She said that the Philippine reports show China’s “bullying” and the desire to include the international courts of law to settle the conflict.
Meanwhile, China presents the issue in the light of their sovereignty over the disputed territory, historical rights, and hopes to resolve the issue.
Portrayals and viewpoints
Though it is still in the process of completion, the second study, also conducted with De Leon and Salvador discussed the United States’ involvement in the Scarborough Shoal issue and the articles representing the countries involved in the issue.
Opinion articles from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, People’s Daily, Wall Street Journal and New York Times were also compared and considered by Montiel to portray the standpoint of the national identities regarding the said controversy.
“It is so we can have a deeper insight into the story, into the kind of national identity portrayed by the newspapers,” Montiel said.
Considering the comparison of the articles, she emphasized the perceptions of the Philippines, China and the United States on each other with respect to their involvement in the Scarborough dispute.
She stated that China sees the Philippines bringing up military and international issues, considering the territorial issues on stability between the two countries.
Moreover, Montiel said how the Philippines saw China as “bullies.”
“The Philippines is accused of grabbing Chinese territory,” she explained.
Nonetheless, she said that the Philippines managed to remain “diplomatic” in the midst of the tensions between China.
In addition, she addressed the participation of the United States in the issue. She said that USA maintains a “neutral position” in disputes concerning sovereignty, yet the Philippines recognizes them as allies.
