Francis L. F. Lee – författare

Since 2003, Hong Kong has witnessed a series of large-scale protests which have constituted the core of a reinvigorated pro-democracy movement. What drove tens of thousands of citizens to the street on a yearly basis to protest? What were the social and organizational bases of the protest movement? How did media and public discourses affect the protests’ formation and mobilization? How did the protesters understand their own actions and the political environment? This book tackles such questions by using a wide range of methods, including population and protest onsite surveys, media content analysis, and in-depth interviews with activists, politicians, and protest participants. It provides an account of the "self-mobilization processes" behind the historic July 1, 2003 protest, and how the protest kick-started new political dynamics and discursive contestations in the public arena which not only turned a single protest into a series of collective actions constituting a movement, but also continually shaped the movement’s characteristics and influence. The book is highly pertinent to readers interested in political development in Hong Kong, and as a case study on "the power of critical events," the book also has broad implications on the study of both media politics and social movements in general.

Since 2003, Hong Kong has witnessed a series of large-scale protests which have constituted the core of a reinvigorated pro-democracy movement. What drove tens of thousands of citizens to the street on a yearly basis to protest? What were the social and organizational bases of the protest movement? How did media and public discourses affect the protests’ formation and mobilization? How did the protesters understand their own actions and the political environment? This book tackles such questions by using a wide range of methods, including population and protest onsite surveys, media content analysis, and in-depth interviews with activists, politicians, and protest participants. It provides an account of the "self-mobilization processes" behind the historic July 1, 2003 protest, and how the protest kick-started new political dynamics and discursive contestations in the public arena which not only turned a single protest into a series of collective actions constituting a movement, but also continually shaped the movement’s characteristics and influence. The book is highly pertinent to readers interested in political development in Hong Kong, and as a case study on "the power of critical events," the book also has broad implications on the study of both media politics and social movements in general.

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong caught the world’s attention and imagination at the end of 2014. The 79-day occupation campaign took on some of the characteristics of the recent wave of large-scale protest movements around the world, including the prominent roles played by the media – both conventional and digital – in the mobilization and communication processes of the movement.

This edited volume, Media, Mobilization and the Umbrella Movement, brings together nine contributions which examine various aspects of the media-movement nexus, including the power of televised images to mobilize people, the role of social media in the insurgent public sphere, young activists’ social media strategies, media influence on citizens’ understanding of civil disobedience, the government’s response to digital media tactics, public discourses about the rule of law, and local and foreign media coverage of the movement. We believe that this high-quality collection can not only enhance our understanding of the Umbrella Movement, but also facilitate and trigger more research and dialogue comparing the Umbrella Movement with other similar protest movements around the world. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Chinese Journal of Communication.

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong caught the world’s attention and imagination at the end of 2014. The 79-day occupation campaign took on some of the characteristics of the recent wave of large-scale protest movements around the world, including the prominent roles played by the media – both conventional and digital – in the mobilization and communication processes of the movement.

This edited volume, Media, Mobilization and the Umbrella Movement, brings together nine contributions which examine various aspects of the media-movement nexus, including the power of televised images to mobilize people, the role of social media in the insurgent public sphere, young activists’ social media strategies, media influence on citizens’ understanding of civil disobedience, the government’s response to digital media tactics, public discourses about the rule of law, and local and foreign media coverage of the movement. We believe that this high-quality collection can not only enhance our understanding of the Umbrella Movement, but also facilitate and trigger more research and dialogue comparing the Umbrella Movement with other similar protest movements around the world. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Chinese Journal of Communication.

A comparative approach to media and communication research plays an important, if not indispensable, role in achieving a core mission of researchers: to delimit the generality and specificity of media and communication theories, enabling researchers to more readily identify the influence of social, political and cultural contexts in shaping media and communication phenomena. To de-Westernize and internationalize media and communication studies has thus become the way forward for overcoming the parochialism of mainstream media and communication studies. This volume reflects on what comparative media and communication research has achieved or failed to achieve, the epistemological and theoretical challenges it is facing, and the new directions in which it should be heading.

A comparative approach to media and communication research plays an important, if not indispensable, role in achieving a core mission of researchers: to delimit the generality and specificity of media and communication theories, enabling researchers to more readily identify the influence of social, political and cultural contexts in shaping media and communication phenomena. To de-Westernize and internationalize media and communication studies has thus become the way forward for overcoming the parochialism of mainstream media and communication studies. This volume reflects on what comparative media and communication research has achieved or failed to achieve, the epistemological and theoretical challenges it is facing, and the new directions in which it should be heading.

This book explores the challenges to news professionalism and media autonomy stemming from the state, market pressure, the digitalization of communication, and a polarized civil society in Hong Kong. China is tightening its control over post-handover Hong Kong, which includes press freedom. Harsh market competition, coupled with shifting readership from mainstream media to digital platforms, is squeezing the business viability of media organizations. The polarization of civil society in post-handover Hong Kong had degraded consensual values upon which news professionalism relies. Journalists have had to reorient news professionalism and media power in the midst of state-society tension, market pressure, and the shifting communication mode driven by digitalization. These are the key questions for Hong Kong media. This dynamic intervention will be of interest to journalists, scholars of civil society, and scholars of Asian politics.