Guanxi and facework: Political reporters' conflict resolution strategies against sources.
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Hwang, Yen-Shyang
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
Tension and conflict have always existed in the relationships between reporters and sources. According to previous studies, reporters must adopt certain strategies to avoid conflicts in order to stay on the news beat. However, conflict resolving strategies have yet to be studied systematically, and those researchers didn’t put much emphasis on “Guanxi,” which is one of the most intriguing elements of interpersonal interaction in Chinese society.
The Chinese Conflict Resolution Model is used to analyze the interaction between reporters and sources in this thesis. In the Guanxi-based society, one will judge his guanxi with others and find an appropriate way to interact with people in certain guanxi. According to Chinese Conflict Resolution Model, human relations can be categorized into vertical in-group, horizontal in-group and horizontal out-group. In the three categories, people take different actions to interact with others.
In the vertical in-group, the reporter tends to endure so as to take care of source’s face. If he wants to complete his personal goal, he will “obey publicly and defy privately” toward the source. Indirect communication is needed if he wants to coordinate with the source. In the horizontal in-group, they mutually give face to one another to avoid conflict. Compromise doesn’t guarantee peace all the time; they could fight overtly and struggle covertly to attain each other’s goal, and communicate directly to solve the problem. As for the horizontal out-group, they palter on their face. However, confrontation will happen if they have different goals. Severance between them will not end until a third-party mediator appears.
Reporters are cultural and social “agents.” The strategies they use to deal with conflict are a reflection of their cultural context, but they could easily compromise the professional ethics of journalism. This thesis provides a new paradigm to analyze this long-discussed issue.
Subjects
記者
消息來源
關係主義
面子功夫
衝突化解
Reporter
source
guanxi
face-work
conflict resolution
SDGs
Type
other
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