An Exploratory Study on the 2018 North Korea-U.S. Summit News and Singapore's Place Branding

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how mainstream international media cover a major political event like the 2018 North Korea-U.S. Summit and how place branding effect is manifested on the Internet. A quantitative content analysis was conducted. A total of 1,990 relevant Internet news stories were collected from May 9 to June 17, 2018 and the types of media mentions Singapore as country and brand received were analyzed. As expected, Singapore garnered worldwide media coverage which in turn helped promote the island-nation's brand. International media reported on Singapore as a Summit location while also highlighting it as an important and attractive, cultural, historical destination. The study's findings indicate that global broadcasters such as CNN and BBC played the biggest role during the Summit in disseminating images of Singapore and landmarks as attractive places. Finally, the visual aspect of the event coverage also served as a formidable marketing instrument in bolstering the nation's brand.

1. Introduction

These days, not only nations but even specific regions embark on brand-building initiatives that include political events, tourism and economic development. Whether the activities are national, regional or city level in scale, each effort is ultimately an attempt at successful branding of the destination. Such efforts necessarily encompass the essential role of inclusive, comprehensive and ongoing market research in identifying and creating the brand values as well as the importance of public and media relations designed to lever the marketing impacts of special events[1]. This study attempts to explore a special political event, namely, ‘2018 Singapore Summit, ’ and to analyze international media’s coverage of Singapore and its major landmarks with regard to place branding.

Famous destinations, especially those best equipped to take advantage of branding opportunities, have emerged as winners in this battle by aggressively touting their advantages via various media. Traditional media like film and television continue to have their impact, but the internet and its offshoot, the social media, have been playing increasingly larger roles in helping promote destination brands.

Singapore, a tropical island city-state where tourism reigns as one of its largest foreign exchange sources[2], is driven by government mandated branding policy, one that seeks deliberately to promote its national brand. The government, seeing tourism as a way for building both communal identity and economic prosperity, has sought actively to bolster place branding; this despite the fact that place branding is an extremely complex and highly political activity that may end up having positive and/or negative impact on the nation’s economy, self-image and identity. Such risks not withstanding Singapore government, as part of its long-range goal, has attempted to make itself a key player in the regional tourism market, aiming for the mantle of both the tourism capital and the transport hub. Singapore also touts itself as a “MICE”- focused country, an acronym for “meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions.” In 2017 alone, this small city-state of just 5.8 million people managed to attract more than 17.4 million visitors[3].

With such emphasis on ‘MICE’, it was no surprise then that Singapore vied to host the 2018 North Korea-U.S. Summit, a mega event, with guaranteed international media attention, that would help promote not only its nation brand but also its various destinations. On May 11, 2018, Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared officially that “Singapore is pleased to host the meeting between President of the United States Donald J. Trump and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea State Affairs Commission Chairman Kim Jong Un on 12 June 2018”[4]. On June 1, U.S. President, Donald Trump, said he would attend the Summit. On June 10, ahead of the actual summit, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made a personal visit to the International Media Center. The Center ended up hosting more than 2, 500 local and international journalists[5].

Singapore government, by investing a huge sum of money(S$20 million) on the Summit, effectively signaled to the media and the world-at-large that the city-state was indeed committed to ‘MICE, ’ a strategy aimed at attracting more international events and visitors. With the government’s backing, Singapore was ready to demonstrate its willingness and ability to host an historical event, a political spectacle set against a safe, peaceful and very tourist-friendly environment. On June 12, 2018, the North Korea-United States Summit commenced at the Capella Hotel located on Sentosa Island in Singapore. The history-making event saw President Donald Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un literally coming together on the hotel terrace. It was a first-ever face-to-face encounter between leaders of the United States and North Korea.

In this context, this study is an attempt to explore how mainstream international media covers major political events like the 2018 North Korea-U.S. Summit (also known as ‘Trump-Kim Summit’) and how place branding is manifested. By examining English-language media’s news coverage - from print and broadcasting media to wire agencies, magazines, and online-news in the period before, during and after the summit - the study assessed whether and how Singapore as a summit location received positive press and what free publicity it may have reaped.

2. Background Literature

2.1 Country as a Place Brand

According to American Marketing Association, a brand can be defined as ‘a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition’[6]. Brands differentiate products and represent a promise of value, evoking emotions and prompting behaviors[7]. Especially, place brands evoke certain values, qualifications and emotional triggers in the consumer’s mind as to the likely value of a certain product that originates from that particular location.

A place brand’s value can also help a country better position itself in the global marketplace vis-a-vis exports, inbound investments, tourism and much more. What’s more, a positive place brand encourages not only inward investment and tourism but also engenders a renewed sense of purpose and identity for the inhabitants of the country, region or city[8].

Many countries have sought to create and host special events because of, among other things, the economic benefits such an event could bring. These types of international events have also been used to supplement natural and existing attractions[9], but for the event to really succeed, media coverage is essential as it plays a crucial role in promoting the destination’s brand. For example, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Ukraine, and Slovenia are examples of countries which are less well-known, has an image problem and thus seeks to creatively and actively remake their image and increase their international image[10]. They do this by hosting international events which are dutifully covered by the press.

In light of Singapore government’s proactive stance on promotion, hosting a major international event like the 2018 Summit must have seemed like a great opportunity to boost both the nation brand and tourism. With the Summit garnering so much attention and interest worldwide, it was little surprise that Singapore volunteered to host. Covered by all the major international media including CNN and BBC, the news highlighted not only the events at Capella Singapore Hotel on Sentosa Island but also Singapore’s major landmarks and attractions.

According to Sevin’s conceptual model on ‘media-public opinion relations’ (Figure 1), government officials and influential local figures who have high credibility and are accountable tend to get more media attention and thus their messages are highly acceptable by the public[11].

(Figure 1) Sevin’s ‘Media-Public Opinion Relations’ Model (2010)

In anticipation of the event, international media such as CNN, BBC, New York Times, Reuters, etc. devoted hours to conjecturing about the actual meeting place and what measures the Singapore government would take to provide the needed security. The Summit and its main actors by the international media was intense, with competing journalists packing International Media Centre at the F1 Pit Building to report on the historic event. According to Straits Times, most of the 2, 500 journalists registered to cover the event had to rely on a live feed of the Trump-Kim encounter, as only a limited number were allowed to witness the meeting first-hand at the exclusive Capella Hotel[12]. Specifically, locations in Singapore which received the most mention by the media were as follows; Capella Singapore hotel in Sentosa, Shangri-La Hotel, the St. Regis Hotel Gardens by the Bay and the Marina Bay Sands. These spots, which rank among Singapore’s main tourist attractions, were shown repeatedly on TV and online news sites before, during, and after the Summit.

2.2 News Media Coverage for Special Events

News media typically establish the public agenda and the public’s thinking/scheme through the amount of coverage an issue receives[13]. Media chooses how to frame an issue and what to report as background information regarding the issue. Practically speaking, media, by giving background information, makes certain knowledges available[11]. As has been the case in most agenda-setting studies, media’s salience factor is defined in terms of the number of stories allocated to the issue [14,15]. While a country’s image is shaped by many facets, media coverage can play a particularly important role in shaping people’s perception of it. Typically, a nation image is formed by a combination of people’s direct experience and various mediated information about the place. When direct experiences are limited, however, news coverage can play a significant role in shaping nation images[16]. As such, a destination brand aims to shape public perceptions with the branding campaign becoming a part of the ‘image modification process’[17].

Brown et al.(2007) argue that for an event to have an impact on the destination’s image, there must be a measurable spillover impact from the said event. Research on this matter suggests that the strongest benefit to brand image from an event will accrue when consumers perceive a meaningful match between the event image and that of the destination [18, 19, 20]. In case of the 2018 Summit, the perceptions of and about the event probably had some spillover effect on Singapore as a travel destination as well as to the nation’s overall brand image. In order to ascertain the magnitude of the spillover effect on place branding, this study analyzed the extent to which Singapore, as a brand, obtained the hoped-for international media attention. That’s because, as Mules and Faulkner(1996) contended, the economic value of a summit to the host country can be predicated on the media attention that the said event engenders[21].

Although there were many researches on nation as a brand and the relation between special events and tourism[22, 23, 24], ‘surprisingly little’ attention has been paid to the role of news media in relation to special political events and nation branding[25]. However, because the subject of the majority of the researches on media impact on nations to date have been limited to sports and cultural exposition[26], researches on the impact of international- scale political events on the host country is relatively scarce.

Moreover, the media-facilitated impact on the country has usually focused only on the economic benefits to the host nation. Such researches take sports and entertainment events like the Olympics, the World Cup, and Korea’s K-drama mania and analyze the aftereffects of its popularity as they relate to the consumption of the host country’s products and services. Additionally, researches into the main facilitator of such attitude shifting–the media–are also lacking.

3. Methods

3.1 Research Questions

In terms of place branding and special events, this exploratory research, raised three questions; first, before, during and after the Summit, how much was Singapore, as a place brand, mentioned by the mainstream English- language news media and which Singapore landmarks were most often mentioned? Second, what media types maintained worldwide coverage of the Summit? Third, how did they depict Singapore and its landmarks in their coverage of the Summit?

3.2 Data Collection

For the purpose of this study, a quantitative content analysis was conducted. It included all the press-generated English-language news with the Summit as topic and which appeared on ‘Google News’ from May 9 to June 17, 2018. As the most popular search engine globally for searching and gathering world news, Google is a valuable source for online news content analysis. Moreover, Google Trends serves as a main source of information for investigating how social trends evolve over time, providing numerous keyword and topics based on public interest and time-series info-graph across fine temporal and spatial scale across the globe[27]. Among the terms and phrases searched on June 12, the very day of Summit, ‘kim jong un’, ‘trump kim summit’ ‘north korea’, and ‘donald trump’ were the most-searched globally. A keyword of news coverage and its headline, “Trump-Kim Summit”, was selected from these terms as ranked by Google Trends during the same period. With irrelevant data filtered out - for example, news containing regional issues (i.e. Purge in North Korea, diplomatic/political issues of the States) - a total of 1, 990 news articles including photos and audiovisual stories from a course of 40 days were collected for analysis.

From these news stories, the types of media mentions Singapore as country and brand received were reviewed. For further investigation, all the news produced that coincided with the timing of the actual Summit (June 10~12) dates when the two heads of states were in Singapore were analyzed to find mentions of Singapore and its landmarks by name. News data came primarily from mainstream and online news media from around the world but also from blogs and alternative media.

3.3 Categories and Measures

With regard to relevant Summit news, this study divided the news outlet types by the following criteria; region, the type of news media (print, broadcasting, wire agencies, magazines, online-only news, etc.), the mention of Singapore and other locations by name in the headline and/or text, and inclusion of visual content(images, photos, videos). The unit of analysis was per story that contained relevant 2018 Summit content. Regarding country as a place and the brand effect on it by news media, a keyword search was conducted to identify the volume of news media attention that likely helped promote the nation brand. Thus, news articles containing Singapore and location name(s) in the text were examined for content analysis. The categories of analysis were as follows;

3.2.1. News agencies by origin and language

Two categories were used to identify the news agencies. First category was based on which region the Summit news originated from (North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania); second category divided the group based on whether the news entity was based out of an English- speaking country or non-English-speaking country (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, Africa and Asia). U.S., however, was coded separately because of the enormous interest and investment it had in the event and that accordingly the U.S.-based news media would most closely cover the Summit. The two categories were combined for an ‘1 to 4’ identification process: 1 stands for news agencies based out of the U.S., 2 for those from other countries where English is the primary language (UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), 3 from countries in European region and Africa where English is not the primary language, and 4 from Asian countries including China, Japan, Korea and Singapore.

3.2.2 Type of news outlet

A news outlet is a media or organization that provides news and information. A typical example of a news outlet is newspaper, magazine, broadcast media such as TV and radio station, blog, and newswire service. For this content analysis, we focused only on those that had online presence, assuming that most, if not all, influential news media will have made that transition[28]. Specifically, the news outlets were divided into broadcasting, newswire service, newspaper dailies, magazines, business journals and internet news sites including influential blogs.

3.2.3 Country brand and landmarks as place brands

Country brand and other landmarks of Singapore were measured for the frequency with which they were mentioned. For the purpose of analysis, when Singapore and other local landmarks such as Sentosa, Capella Hotel, Shangri-La, etc. were mentioned in the same story, it was counted as an instance of a country being exposed as a place brand. During the Summit itself, news abounded about Singapore, the country, and a variety of its tourist attractions, including hotels and restaurants. For this study, each unique mention of a landmark/business name in the headline or the text was counted only once.

3.2.4 Visual Content (Photo/Video News)

Visual content such as photos and videos attached to relevant stories were denoted by types; photo, video or combined. If there was no visual content, it was coded as none. The news story counted as containing visual content only if it specifically included general images of Singapore and/or landmarks/businesses. Photos and videos which failed to identify the location as being in Singapore were excluded. When photos and video were both included in the news, it was coded as “combined.”

3.2.5 Inter-coder Reliability

Coding was conducted manually by two graduate students whose majors are journalism and communication. To improve upon their coding skills, they were trained beforehand and supervised by the researcher during the process. After repeated pre-testing of the codebook, the final inter-coder reliability tests were conducted on a randomly selected subsample: 10% of the total number of articles under consideration (199 items). Inter-rater reliability was calculated using Cohen' kappa(κ), which is commonly used in the literature research for nominal level variables. Six variables were calculated using SPSS 24.0, and the inter-rater agreement for coding news article inclusion was 95% for the two coders. More specifically, inter-rater agreement for coding article attributes was 92-97% (region=.972, news outlet=.949, destination frequency=.929, visual content=.957) and each variable was found to be highly acceptable. Based on the guidelines from Lombard et al(2002), “coefficients of .90 or greater would be acceptable to all, .80 or greater would be acceptable in most situations, and below that, there exists great disagreement”[29]. Once Cohen’s Kappa reached over 92% across content analysis variables, coding commenced.

4. Results

4.1. Number of Summit News Coverage

Figure 2 shows the overall trend in news coverage and the number of times the name ‘Singapore’ appears on the news. The number of news coverage peaked on June 12(N=327). As shown in Table 1, 46.8% of the Summit news mentioned Singapore and/or other landmarks by name. It is noteworthy that on May 10, the day when U.S. president, Donald Trump, affirmed officially that the event would be held at Singapore[30], 51 out of 74(68.9%) news stories in their headlines mentioned the Summit location by name. ‘Singapore’ and its landmarks most often appeared by name during the June 6 to 12 news cycle, time when the two heads-of-state were physically in Singapore(69.8%).

(Figure 2) Overall news trends for the “Trump-Kim” Summit

(Table 1) Total number of Singapore and its local places mentioned within the headline

(Table 2) Number of ‘Singapore’ and ‘local places’ mentioned within the Summit news

Between June 10 and 12, there were altogether 628 news articles about the Summit(Table2), of which 29.3%(n=184) mentioned “Singapore” by name on the headlines. Interestingly, local landmark mentions in the text of the story(n=255) exceeded the appearance of the word “Singapore” in the headlines. It was also counted, that from June 10 to 12, Singapore’s remarkable landmarks were mentioned, on average, at least once per story(M=1.00). However, on the very day the Trump and Kim Jong Un actually met, the mean number of location mentions (M=0.76) was actually lower than the other days. Rather, news stories mentioned local landmarks by name far more often and more in-depth during the two days leading up to the meeting, June 10(M=1.56) and 11(M=1.09), when the two leaders were in their respective hotels and in Kim Jong Un’s case, out visiting local landmarks.

It was noteworthy that Singapore as a nation was not the only beneficiary of the media frenzy. Landmarks and businesses within the island-nation also got a huge boost. Especially, top-tier hotels, such as Shangri-La, Capella Singapore and St. Regis benefitted greatly from the media exposure.

4.2. Media Types of the Summit News

A noteworthy aspect was that during the Summit, U.S. news outlets specified Singapore by name much more often than media from other countries or regions. As to the type of news media that covered the Summit, Table 3 shows six major types. They are broadcast, newswire service, newspaper daily, weekly/monthly magazine, business journal, and internet news site. The media types were divided into regions (Table 4).

As expected, U.S.-based media’s coverage of the Summit was the most intense: internet news sites(n=364), newspaper daily(n=343) and broadcast(n=294) led the way in coverage for a total of 1, 276 stories mentioning Singapore and its landmark by place brand.

(Table 3) Singapore brand mentions by news outlets(6.10-12)

(Table 4) Number of Singapore mentioned by news outlet types and by region(country)

In contrast, the number of relevant news stories by EU and Africa media were relatively small(n=105). English not being the primary language in most of EU and Africa, it is probably natural that there was less English-language reporting of the Summit. Other English-speaking countries like UK, Canada and Australia also reported less aggressively when compared to U.S.-based media. In fact, they even lagged Asia-based news media(n=280), which surpassed them and EU/Africa region in mentioning Singapore and its landmarks by place name. Being in close physical proximity to the event, Asia-based news outlets also mentioned Singapore most often by name in their news(136 out of 280, 48.6%) compared to those media from other regions or country(U.S : 21.3%, Non-US English-speaking countries: 29.8%, EU/Africa: 33%, and Korea: 36%, Average: 27.2%).

(Figure 3) Overall news coverage by news outlet types and by region(country)

4.3. Promotion of Singapore’s Image

In order to see how ‘Trump-Kim Summit’ news helped to bolster Singapore’s image as an attractive destination, the number of photos and videos embedded in the articles were counted. Among news outlet types, broadcast news and wire service news contained more visual content about Singapore as a location than all the others including even magazines.

By region Asia-based news outlets led the way percentage-wise in visual content reporting with some 27.2% (Table 5) of them featuring photos, videos or both; compared to the overall average (16.4%, Figure 4), Asia-based media’s visually enhanced news was notable. A total of 190 location photos of Singapore were counted out of the 1, 990 articles, with U.S.-based media leading in absolute number of visuals utilized. Stories by Asia-based news outlets, however, usually featured larger landmark photos than those from other regions including the U.S. Meanwhile, U.S.-based news outlets utilized more videos than media from other regions.

(Table 5) Number of visual news (and text only)

(Figure 4) Singapore visual news by region(country)

Regarding images, business journals and travel sites featured more Summit-related destination pictures than other media outlets. For instance, CNN’s travel section posted an article entitled ‘a peek inside the St. Regis, Singapore, ’ the hotel that Kim Jong Un and his delegation stayed at. Another example came from The Straits Times, Singapore’s premier newspaper; ahead of the Summit, it listed eleven candidate locations for the Summit including Capella Hotel in Sentosa Island and featured large, attractive images of the respective locations. When Kim Jong Un, with Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnanat as his guide, left his hotel to visit Singapore’s more famous attractions like the scenic waterfront, Gardens by the Bay, the impromptu night tour drew a huge international and local media attention. If Singapore’s aim was to show, or at least remind, the world that it was an attractive destination as well an ideal place for business and meetings, the successful execution of the high-profile visit seems to have worked.

(Figure 5) Singapore related visual news by news outlet types

In addition, use of photos and/or videos differed according to media type. Overall, broadcast outlets featured the most Singapore landmark/location images. For instance, the Capella Hotel on Singapore’s resort island of Sentosa, the venue for the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was introduced by CNBC News as a luxurious, beach-lined hotel, while Sentosa Island was presented as a major tourist spot that boasts a number of high-end hotels, golf courses, and a Universal Studios theme park.

The results indicate that global broadcasters such as CNN and BBC played the biggest roles in disseminating images of Singapore and its landmarks as attractive places during the period under research. BBC, for example, did an in-depth story on Singapore’s Sentosa Island, elaborating on its history and character while highlighting various images of Singapore. Asian broadcasters, too, shone the light on Singapore’s charm; Channel News Asia, for instance, featured Singapore and its hot spots during both regular and live coverage of the Summit. In short, Singapore’s major landmarks such as Sentosa, Capella hotel, Marina Bay Sands, Merlion, Shangri-La Hotel, St. Regis Hotel were key facets in the general Summit coverage.

Wire service agencies and internet news also enlisted the use of visuals, but photos featured more heavily than videos. Broadcast outlets featured more videos (or a combination of photos and videos) than all other media types. Meanwhile, business journals and internet news often featured images of Singapore’s luxury hotels including Capella Hotel and the Shangri-La Hotel, citing them as possible summit locations.

During the Summit period, June 10 to June 12, U.S. news media tended to provide more video news than those from countries in other regions, while news media from Asian countries tended to offer photo news the most. With regards to news outlet types, wire services and internet news media were likely to offer more photos than other news outlets. Meanwhile, business journals failed to provide both video and mixed content news incorporating photos and videos.

5. Conclusion

This study examined to what extent international news media covered the Summit news, including Singapore as a destination brand, and which Singapore landmarks were most often mentioned by name by the international mainstream media on the Internet. More specifically, this study investigated the locations that received specific mentions from the mainstream media in order to gauge the impact the media had in terms of promoting Singapore’s place brand before, during and after the summit.

Having analyzed the international news coverage of the 2018 U.S.-North Korea summit on the Internet, this study has found that its host, Singapore, as nation and destination, received worldwide coverage by media which in turn helped promote the island-nation’s brand. It was also found that visual contents and/or news mentions could serve as a marketing instrument that helps bolster a nation’s brand.

International media also highlighted the fact that Singapore is a neutral country, a nation viewed widely as an honest international broker. The 2018 Summit could have resulted in casting a positive light on the nation brand: that it’s a politically neutral, safe and peaceful destination. Singapore, an active host to international sporting events and various international organs’ annual meetings, had always nurtured an image of a creative, safe haven in its media campaigns[21]. For the Summit, Singapore’s aim was again to present itself as a well-ordered, advanced country, and using various international news media as conduits, highlighted the fact that it is an ideal destination for future bilateral meetings and hub for regional diplomacy in Asia.

According to The Straits Times, in 2018, Singapore’s hospitality industry recorded an almost 16% increase from the previous April-June period, “even after Singapore’s growth in hotel room supply.” A media intelligence analyst surmised that Singapore reaped more than US $700 million worth of exposure by hosting the historic Trump-Kim summit. If true, that means a 38-fold return on investment via tourism, retail and media exposure[12].

This study is an initial foray into the relationship between media coverage and nation brand. Besides the news coverage, other factors such as the government’s Singapore as “regional hub” campaign, marketing of the city-state as the go-to destination for major events, and other place brand strategies could all have added to impact its promotional effort and nation brand. However, this exploratory research found that during the 2018 Trump-Kim Singapore Summit not just general news but related yet non-political coverage of Singapore also increased markedly; it was also revealed that the spike in Singapore and its landmarks being identified by name by the press coincided with Singapore experiencing a surge in its hospitality business.

6. Limitations of the Study and Discussions

The limitations of this study can be summed up as follows. First, although the sample size was quite robust and the full content of the relevant news were analyzed, the sample cannot be considered a true-life representation of the news world because of limit inherent in the English news-only analysis. Second, not enough relevant research exists about the link between international news coverage and nation brand, and thus a comparative review was difficult. Third, more can and should be done with semantic measures like semantic relatedness between place or destinations and promotive elements. Finally, this study’s findings reinforce the notion from the perspective of the host nation that a special event like the ‘Trump-Kim Summit’ can bolster both recognition and image.

Despite the key findings, an analysis that digs more deeply into the dynamic relationship between the mainstream news media outlets and its spillover impacts on place branding might reveal other nuances not covered by this paper. As such, future studies should focus more specifically on the complexities traditional media like print and broadcasting journalism and social media and their influence have, intended or unintended, on place branding. Moreover, a quantitative, semantic analysis of news and its effect on a particular nation brand could also add to the understanding of news content and its ancillary impact on promotion. It will also be interesting to see the long-term economic impact the media’s coverage of the 2018 U.S.-North Korea Summit had on Singapore, especially on key areas such as tourism and foreign direct investments.

☆ This research was supported by Korea National Open University Research Fund.