Televised Debate and Press Agenda: Testing the Agenda-Building Effects in the Case of 2014 Taipei Mayor Election

Abstract

The study attempts to test the agenda-building effects of the televised debate in the case of Taipei Mayor Election in 2014. The results indicate the existence of agenda-building effects of the candidates' speech in the televised debate: The performance of independent candidate Ko had successfully affect the press agenda, while the KMT candidate Lien had failed to make the issues of policies he stressed salient, only issues of personalities emphasized by the press. It is also found that these effects are not always consistent with media's blue/green partisan orientation, which implies a potential shift of public opinion in Taiwan society. LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS Televised Debates and Political CampaignThe televised debate is of importance for it had substantial and lasting influence on voting, and even the voters who did not watch the television might also be affected by the messages from media or friends [1] . Given this knowledge, it is not surprising that political parties try to control or at least influence the media agenda [2] . However, the study presented evidence that not all of issues being emphasized by the Republican and Democratic candidates and parties were being emphasized by the newspapers and television networks studied [3] . And the issues which the candidates stressed most prominently were not the same as those displayed most prominently in the news [4] . The televised debate held for 2014 Taipei Mayor Election was influential which achieved the highest audience rating in history of Taiwan televised debates, nearly 2.3 million audience watched the debate [5] . Drawing from the previous studies above, we propose the research question as follow:RQ: To what extent the Press coverage followed the issue agenda built by Ko and Lien in the televised debate respectively?As previous studies found out, media are inclined to coverage candidates' personalities rather than proposed policies in televised debates [12]. The study of