When new media operates within a state-mediated press system: assessing new media’s impact on journalism crisis perceptions in Singapore and Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

New media has been described as both a boon and a bane for journalism in contemporary times, enabling more issues to be tabled while drawing resources away from traditional newsrooms and spreading unverifiable content. How new media has impacted journalism, however, has tended to be couched within the liberal-democratic ideological framework found typically in dominant Anglo-American literature; research has been scant on societies that may be exposed to Western liberal ideals but whose media systems still experience some form of authoritarian influence or control. Of interest are two Asian ‘global cities’ in transition, Singapore and Hong Kong, labeled by scholars as ‘authoritarian’ and ‘semi-authoritarian’ respectively. Through a textual analysis of survey and interview responses from 160 news journalists, this study identifies the need for a three-dimensional approach to examine new media’s impact on journalism crisis perceptions in such hybrid societies – at the material, discursive, and ideological levels. Despite less state control on the media in Hong Kong, both online and offline, this study discovers that it is the Singaporeans that experience less fear of journalism crisis in the digital age, prompting alternative ways to understand state mediation of the press in a digital media landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism crisis
• new media
• authoritarianism
• liberal democracy
• Singapore
• Hong Kong

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Shangyuan Wu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; she completed her PhD in Communication at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Her research interests include global journalism studies, political economy of communication, development studies, and comparative media analysis. In particular, her research projects have involved investigations into the impact of social, political, economic and/or technological forces on the future of the journalism industry. She is trained in journalism, and worked previously as a senior broadcast journalist in Singapore, covering the areas of politics, defense, and education.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under [grant number 752-2013-2132].