Media construction of protesters in Hong Kong

Abstract

Existing research are mostly focused on Hong Kong protests itself, the events leading up to the protest or how has the protest differed from its predecessors. Little is known about the protesters and what they have done or experienced after their participation in a protest. As such, this research aims to examine the social constructions of protesters in HK and more specifically the study of how one local newspaper, South China Morning Post (SCMP), constructs 2019 HK protesters. As many newspapers engage in self-censorship due to its political agenda, hegemonic narratives are common where audiences are exposed to one dominant construction. The two research questions of this research are as follow: how did the SCMP construct Hong Kong protesters who had left the SAR? And is there a typology of narratives? If so, what are they? Based on the content analysis of 107 SCMP articles and using theoretical framework of social constructionism, it was found that there is indeed a typology of narratives which included a mixture of claims and counterclaim. Some of the findings include the claims of faceless and individuals, villain construct, political tool, linkages to USChina relationship, linkages to other key actors and counterclaim include countering the villain construct. This therefore illustrates that SCMP does not only provide one hegemonic construct. The findings were further analysed using Surette (2015)’s four stage model of social construction to provide a more holistic discussion.