Alternative Internet Radio, Press Freedom and Contentious Politics in Hong Kong, 2004–2014

Abstract

This article analyses the rise and development of alternative Internet radio in Hong Kong in the past decade in tandem with the changing status of press freedom and contentious politics in the city. The article illustrates that alternative Internet radio first emerged a decade ago as the self-defence of the civil society against political encroachments on the media. Cognisant of the political potential of alternative Internet radio, pro-democracy radical political parties and social activists have subsequently appropriated this new medium to facilitate and engage in contentious politics. In the face of tightening political control of mainstream media in recent years, alternative Internet radio has become a “safe haven” for the exited rebel voices. Despite the considerable political significance of alternative Internet radio (and alternative Internet media in general) at this moment, its prospect remains uncertain due to potential regulatory control and increasing political pressures on Internet media in the future.

KEYWORDS:

• alternative Internet radio
• press freedom
• social movements
• contentious politics
• Hong Kong

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Freedom of the Press Index conducted by the Freedom House indicated that the global ranking of Hong Kong's press freedom declined from 61 in 2004 to 74 in 2014. Hong Kong was thus downgraded from a “free” to a “partly free” society. The World Press Freedom Index conducted by the Reporters without Borders also registered a decline of Hong Kong's press freedom in recent years.

2. The table only includes the most prominent politically-oriented alternative Internet radio stations in Hong Kong. Some less popular stations include TalkOnly, Non-Commercial Radio Hong Kong, Talk Radio Hong Kong, Rainbow Broadcasting, Pure Addiction and WM6471. Most of these were very short lived, and operated for a very short period of time from 2004 to 2005 (see Leung 2008).

3. Here we only compare the popularity of the alternative Internet radio stations with the websites of mainstream media. According to the statistics of the website traffic search engine Alexa.com, as of 1 August 2014 the most popular mainstream media websites were the Next Media Group (ranked 12th in Hong Kong), TVB (ranked 26th), Oriental Daily (ranked 29th) and Ming Pao (ranked 96th). For alternative Internet radio stations, the most popular was Meme Hong Kong (ranked 115th), followed by Passion Times (ranked 123rd), Hong Kong Peanut (ranked 363rd), D100 (483rd), Ragazine (ranked 514th) and MyRadio (ranked 1008th).

4. The archival materials include academic literatures, news reports and published interviews with the alternative Internet radio practitioners. The analysis is guided by the author's past research on the subject and his own knowledge and close observations about the development of alternative Internet radio in Hong Kong over the past decade.

5. For instance, during apartheid South Africa, alternative radio served as the “instrument of protest” for the anti-apartheid movement (Bosch 2006); in 1980s Bolivia, in opposition to the military government-sanctioned “nationalist radio network”, the miners formed community radio stations to constitute a “network for democracy” (Velasquez 1993); and in Taiwan, the flourishing of underground radio stations in the 1990s contributed to the democracy movement at that time (Ke 2000).

6. For instance, alternative Internet radio stations have flourished in Turkey (Algul 2013), Egypt (Jensen 2013), Australia (Tacchi et al. 2004), Germany (Muhlenfeld 2002), the United States (Johnson 2005) and the Global South (Thompson, Gómez, and Toro 2005).

7. Article 45 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong's mini-constitution, stipulates that the Chief Executive of Hong Kong would eventually be elected through universal suffrage.

8. LSD had three Legislative Councilors (out of 60 seats) and four District Councilors (out of more than 400 seats) from 2008 to 2012.

Additional information

Dennis K.K. Leung is a doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Communication, New Asia College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong.