Reporting Public Diplomacy at Home: Taiwanese Media News Coverage of the New Southbound Policy

Abstract

Public diplomacy is about attracting foreign public attention; however, domestic public support is no less critical. The domestic public's support and understanding are equally essential to diplomatic activities abroad, and it depends on the information they receive about the policy. When the Taiwanese government claims that NSP (New Southbound Policy) received positive support from the public, how do they make those claims? What kind of information about the NSP is received by the Taiwanese public? This study analyzes the NSP-related news in Taiwanese media to answer this question. It focuses on Liberty Times Network (LTN) and United Daily News (UDN) coverage of the NSP since 2016. The text and sentiment analysis of their reports show that although they have different political orientations, overall, both LTN and UDN are generally positive in their reporting on NSP, although UDN is more critical. These results indicate that media polarization occurred in the report, sentiment analysis shows that the difference was insignificant. This situation may indicate that in the case of the NSP case, media polarization in Taiwan is not in effect for shaping public opinion.