Press Coverage and the Legitimization of Protest in Hong Kong and Myanmar

• In Event: Protest in Global Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, numerous anti-government and pro-democracy protests in Asia have featured prominently in the media. Journalists have reported on protests against the military regime in Thailand, against laws that undermine labor rights in Indonesia, and against government lockdowns in China. However, the protests which received the most extensive media attention were the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong and Myanmar. Drawing on these two cases, this paper seeks to understand how the press covers pro-democracy protests and the degree to which their coverage legitimized or delegitimized the protesters and their democracy movements.

This is an important area of study since media coverage of protests can affect broader public opinion, and potentially the success or failure of protest movements. To date, a large body of literature on protest has found that the news media tends to ignore protests, until they grow large and disruptive. At that point, media coverage becomes hostile to protesters, often emphasizing their violent and confrontational tactics instead of their substantive goals. Coverage that delegitimizes protests is termed the ‘protest paradigm’ by scholars. Most of the studies that provide evidence for the protest paradigm have focused on cases in the West, and on protests over government policies—on as issues of abortion laws, labor laws, as well protests against nuclear weapons, war, and globalization. However, there has been far less protest paradigm research on pro-democracy protests, a type of protest that typically occurs outside of the West. As such is it unclear how pro-democracy protests are covered by the media. Intuitively, and counter to the protest paradigm logic, we might expect journalists to actually legitimize pro-democracy protests, as journalists rely on democratic freedoms to do their work. At the same time, journalists operate within particular media organizations and under broader social, economic, and political constraints that can shape their reporting.

In order to understand how journalists cover protests, previous studies have engaged in a content analysis of news reports, identifying how the activities of protesters are framed. For instance, some frames, such as ‘confrontation’ are seen to delegitimize protesters, while others frames such as ‘debate’ legitimizes protests by emphasizing the goals of protest movements. For this study, a number of research assistants will help me code three important frames in news reports: Violence, Confrontation, and Goals. In contrast to previous studies, we will also record how pro-administrative forces (such as government or military leaders, or the police) are framed. In pro-democracy protests both protesters and pro-administrative forces can be delegitimized by coverage that frames them as violent or confrontational. But coverage can also legitimize and foster sympathy for actors by explaining their goals and motivations. In sum, understanding how both opposing actors are framed will offer a fuller understanding of news coverage. Beyond framing, we will also quantify the extent to which protest leaders and pro-administration sources are quoted in the reports. This will help identify who is being given more opportunities to explain their side’s views. To study media coverage from the Asian and international press, we will draw on reports from Hong Kong and Myanmar newspapers, from the Asian press (China, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia) and from the West (U.K. and U.S). Additionally, we chose both left-wing and right-wing newspapers from the Western press.

Using the cases of Hong Kong and Myanmar, and this selection of newspapers, I can investigate how the coverage of pro-democracy protest is affected by four important factors. First, I will compare how protests are reported on in the domestic and foreign press. Second, I will investigate if freedom of the press is associated with more positive coverage of protests. The intuitive expectation is that newspapers published in the West will have more favorable views of the pro-democracy protesters compared to the Asian press, which operate within a more restrictive environment. Third, I will if see if the left- and right-wing press covered the protests differently. The key expectation here is that the left wing press will be more sympathetic to protesters. Finally, I will explore whether the more geostrategic nature of Hong Kong affects protest coverage. We might expect coverage of Hong Kong protests to be more extensive in the foreign press, and in addition, there might be efforts to legitimize certain actors due to strategic interests.

The importance of this study go beyond the two cases. In recent years, democracy has become increasingly challenged in many parts of the world. So we may see more pro-democracy protests and consequently more coverage in the media. Identifying the factors that shape this coverage will help us understand protest dynamics as well as how protests are perceived by publics at home and abroad.

Author

• Colm Fox, Singapore Management University