Public Health Crisis and Political Accountability: Examining Government-media Communication at Chinese Press Conferences During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Routine press conferences nowadays have already become a very common and popular platform for government-media communication in China. This study examines journalists’ questions, which constitute an indispensable part in government-media communication, before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis at Chinese press conferences. The focus of the analysis is the variation of “adversarialness” contained in journalists’ questions before and after the outbreak of the pandemic crisis. The coding of this study considered the characteristics of Chinese data and was based on a modified version of Clayman and Heritage’s widely used coding systems (Clayman & Heritage, 2002; Clayman, Elliott, Heritage & McDonald, 2006) for measuring adversarial questioning in U.S. press conferences. The results show that, there are variations on several indicators of adversarialness and the intensity of the indicators turns out to be different before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. Journalists indeed transform the press conference into a formidable instrument of political accountability under such special context.

Keywords

The COVID-19 Pandemic / Chinese Press Conference / Government-media Communication / Press-state Culture / Intercultural Communication / Journalistic Adversarialness and Deference / Political Accountability

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