A case study of the Foxconn suicides

Abstract

This study used an international perspective to analyze how newspapers in the United States and China framed a specific global sweatshop issue: a continuous spate of suicides at the Foxconn Technology Group, a major supplier to Apple, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard. Through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 92 newspaper articles appearing in US and Chinese newspapers, this study found Chinese newspapers framed the suicides mainly as the psychological problems of a young generation rather than a sweatshop issue. Newspapers in the US used a traditional human rights abuser frame to portray the suicides. Foxconn was the main social actor cited in most news coverage. Both the US and Chinese newspapers framed the case as a China-specific problem, ignoring global social justice and world economy aspects. This study contributes more broadly to framing research by developing an approach that is distinctly used for cross-cultural framing studies about a global issue.