Who Tells People How a Government Is Doing? -- Government Performance, Public Information and Imported News “Gate Keepers”*
Chen, Don-Yun** Lu, Chi-Jung*** Sun, Wen-Show ****
Abstract
The effectiveness of democratic governance depends on citizens’ ability to utilize public information to discern the performance of their government. The problem is not only related to citizen competence but also to the communicative capacity of the media in a democracy. In this research, we utilized WEF’s annual Global Competitiveness Report to reveal the process of international news communication to examine how various so-called new media “gate keepers” influence the outcome of news reports in the newsmaking process. Our research looks into three questions: 1, What is the path of WEF news being formed in Taiwan and who are the major “gate keepers”? 2, How do the local media acquire the WEF news and how do they reproduce it? 3, What role are governments playing in the process? Do their involvements alter the content of the news? Do their activities reinforce or undermine the democratic process in Taiwan? Results show that major gate-keepers are the government, media, and research institutes. Media will add information about Taiwan to the news and, at the same time, use their partisan preferences in reproducing the news. Government actors do not have the dominant role in the process but will always be at the center of the news. Practical suggestions from this study are: (1) Media literacy is one of the critical competences for contemporary public managers; (2) More sensitive and real-time media response is needed in government public relations efforts; (3) There might be an ethical dilemma when professionalism and responsiveness clash with each other; (4) The rise of the Internet and social media should be on the top of academic exploration into the area of media and public administration in the future.
Keywords: democratic governance, government performance, public information, mass communication, gate-keeper, news media
* Earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of TASPPA 2006. We thank for different reviewers’ revision suggestions.
** Professor and Chair, Department of Public Administration, National Chengchi University, e-mail: donc@nccu.edu.tw.
*** Master, Department of Public Administration, National Chengchi University.
**** Master, Graduate Institute of Communications, Shih Hsin University.