Media and Globalisation: calibrating international media reporting and bias on Singapore’s Presidential Elections 2017

Abstract

The media, as a carrier of information within and across societies, has always been an important part of globalisation. However, media bias is one of the most significant problems plaguing the media industry. This thesis explores media bias in foreign news reporting across the globe - an increasingly large part of news reporting in the age of globalisation - and attempts to fill the gap in the current literature on media representation and bias. This thesis finds that in the reporting of Singapore’s 2017 presidential elections, news outlets around the world tend to be more critical of all aspects of the electoral process if they are intended for audiences in more ‘free’ societies, while media outlets aimed at less ‘free’ countries tend to highlight positive aspects of the process, and seemed more pro-establishment. Societies understand themselves through meta-narrative frames shaped by social and political structures over time. The local media then reinforces such familiar narratives through portraying Singapore’s elections in relation to the audience society’s norms and beliefs of how a country with Singapore’s identity ought to act. If the audience society recognises Singapore to be of a similar identity to itself, the media would report Singapore’s elections favourably to reaffirm the desirability of its identity. On the other hand, if another audience society determines that Singapore is an ‘other’ in relation to itself, the media reports will be generally represent the same event negatively to highlight the differences between Singapore and itself.