4.3.3.1 Article counts
Using the selected KTS and REG, news articles in the five selected newspapers are searched and counted month-by-month from January 2001 to May 201645. Figure 4.2 shows the results of the article counts46 of the five sample newspapers. To test the reliability of the method used in this study, more search jobs are conducted with different sample groups of newspapers using the same selected KTS and REG. For the comparison, all article searches are performed from 1 January 2005 to 5 December 2016 because of the availability of the electronic archives for the selected sample newspapers.
Figure 4.2 Article Counts of Five Sample Newspapers
Source: Author‘s calculations based on the CCNFD database. https://www.cnki.net.
45The reprinted articles are counted as equivalent to adding more weight to some important and influential articles that are
repeatedly published in more than one newspaper.
46 In Figure 4.2, the counts are inaccurate from 01/01/2001 to 12/31/2004 because the electronic version is not available for
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
The five sample newspaper groups are: group A, the top five selected newspapers in the financial area; group B, a single newspaper, CSJ; groups C and D containing five and eight newspapers, respectively, and both in more than one area (e.g., People’s Daily is a newspaper covering a variety of news topics such as economic, financial, social and political topics); and group E, newspapers in CCNFD with a name including any of the following terms: ‗securities‘, ‗financial‘, ‗economic‘, ‗finance‘ and ‗economy‘. The detailed information on the five groups of the sample newspapers is shown in Appendix Table E.4.
Table 4.5 Correlations of the Counts of Five Groups of Sampled Newspapers
Group A Group B Group C Group D Group E
Group A 1.0000 0.7992 0.9103 0.8994 0.9709
Group B 0.7992 1.0000 0.8925 0.8660 0.7389
Group C 0.9103 0.8925 1.0000 0.9646 0.8917
Group D 0.8994 0.8660 0.9646 1.0000 0.8963
Group E 0.9709 0.7389 0.8917 0.8963 1.0000
Source: Author‘s calculation based on the CCNFD database. https://www.cnki.net.
The correlation coefficients of the article counts are calculated based on the search results in terms of the five groups. Table 4.5 shows that all groups are highly statistically correlated except the coefficient of Groups B and A is less than 0.8. Since Group B includes only one newspaper (the CSJ), the smaller sample might be the main cause of a relatively low correlation coefficient. Figure 4.3 shows that the counts of the different groups display a similar time trend from 2005 to 2015. Therefore, the results suggest that the news-based method used for article search can provide useful, reliable information (Bontempi et al., 2016).
Figure 4.3 Changes in Article Counts of Five Different Sample Groups
Source: Author‘s calculations based on the CCNFD database. https://www.cnki.net. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
4.3.3.2 Human reading audit
To double check the reliability and accuracy of article counts of the five selected newspapers, an audit study of 2116 articles chosen from the CSJ newspaper based on the selected KTS and REG from 1 January 2001 to 5 December 2016 is conducted. The result shows that the accuracy rate of article counts is 0.94 for monthly data.
Following the human reading audit, 127 articles are excluded from the total count of 2116 articles because all are irrelevant to policy risk and/or uncertainty in the stock market. These excluded articles relate to six types of topic: (1) financial report summaries of listed companies; (2) analysis of changes in a single share; (3) comments on the international economy; (4) analysis of industrial policies; (5) comments on changes in overseas stock markets; and (6) analysis of other financial markets such as the insurance and bond markets. All news articles in the sample newspapers finally included in the count comprise four main categories of topics as follows.
(1) A reprinted policy report
The core contents of policy reports are directly connected to the financial or stock markets and the analysis is mainly about the risk and/or uncertainty in present or future stock markets, or the potential influence of regulatory policies or securities laws on the development of stock markets.
(2) Official speech or interview
Articles relate to official comments about the influence of government policies on the stock market, such as officials‘ speeches, media interviews, government announcements and spokesman‘s responses to most concerning questions from reporters. From these articles, the official attitudes about the stock market can be conjectured and thus possibly induce market risk or uncertainty.
(3) Policy-related analysis
News articles, usually written by staff correspondents, professional analysts or researchers, that concentrate on analyzing the potential impacts of regulatory policies or government policy documents on the stock market and intend to present views on the policy risk and/or uncertainty in the stock market.
(4) Daily market review
The counts include a considerable number of news articles from the column ‗Daily Market Review‘ in the sample newspapers. These columns are regularly published and mainly focus on a daily review of stock market changes in securities or financial newspapers such as the CSJ, ST and SSN; some clearly claim that regulatory policies, government intervention or regulation activities are the main causes of the big movements in the stock market.
The results of the human reading audit confirm that the method used in this study is reliable and efficient in providing useful information to construct the PRI for China‘s stock market.