Uncovering alternative ‘journalism crisis’ narratives in Singapore and Hong Kong: When state influences interact with Western liberal ideals in a changing media landscape
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The topic of journalism crisis has become increasingly pertinent as criticisms mount against news media systems that have prioritized private over public interests and/or failed to meet the challenges brought on by the Internet. Much research on journalism crisis, however, is set in the Anglo-American context and couched within a liberal-democratic ideological framework; little is known about how journalism crisis is experienced in societies that may be heavily exposed to Western liberal ideals but whose media systems continue to experience some form of authoritarian influence or control. Evaluating all journalism realities through the Western lens may create erroneous perceptions that alternative systems are lacking or deficient. This study uses a framework of crisis narratives to shed light on the web of structural-causal factors that might be influencing fears of journalism crisis in such hybrid societies. Establishing first the crisis narratives most commonly discussed in dominant journalism crisis literature, this study then notes the selective adoption of liberal ideologies by countries outside the Western world, as imperial influences interact with local histories and cultures. Of interest are two Asian ‘global cities’ in transition, Singapore and Hong Kong. Through surveys and in-depth interviews, this study uncovers stark differences in the journalism crisis perceptions of news-workers in Singapore and Hong Kong and argues the existence of a ‘crisis of legitimacy’ narrative, pertaining to the system of governance, that must be accounted for when studying journalism’s decline outside of the Western context.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".