The Tabloidization of Taiwan Newspapers

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the changes of the newspaper contents before and after the launching of Apple Daily, so-called tabloid newspaper in Taiwan. It has been hypothesized that TaiwanÂ’s newspapers become more tabloidized when they face the severe competition from a well printed, more colorful, and celebrity-oriented newspaper. This study content analyzed major newspapers in Taiwan to examine the size of the story, news categories (news, figure writing, special report), subjects, major actors, news source, public interest (high or low), and tabloid journalism (yes or no). The result showed that thereÂ’re almost no significant differences between the contents of news in terms of major actors, subjects and news source for the three local newspapers in 2001 and 2004. The only significant differences between the news presented by these three newspapers were the public interest element of the news and tabloid journalism. The differences in news categories and contents between local newspapers and that of Apple Daily were significant. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding