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Abstract
This essay reviews the coverage of the Occupy Central movement in the UK national daily press from the first notice of the growing movement in July 2013 to the time of writing in January 2015. This is a relatively small subset of the total mentions of Hong Kong in the UK press, which cover a wide range of cultural, leisure, sport, and business stories. Hong Kong is very far from invisible to the UK press in “normal” times but, given that the UK is the former colonial power in Hong Kong, and that the terms under which the territory was returned to China were formalized in an inter-state agreement between the UK and China (the Joint Declaration, ratified in 1985), it is reasonable to assume that developments in the constitutional situation would attract very considerable attention on the part of the UK government. Studies of foreign news suggest that nationally specific factors tend to influence news salience so we would concomitantly expect that the UK newspaper press would devote substantial amounts of space to reporting and discussing the issues raised by these developments.
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1.Factiva, Dow Jones. https://global-factiva-com.lib-ezproxy.hkbu.edu.hk/sb/SimpleSearch.aspx?NAPC = p. Accessed 3 September 2015.
2. NRS Ltd. National Readership Survey. http://www.nrs.co.uk/. Accessed 3 September 2015.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Colin Sparks
Colin Sparks is professor of media studies and Director of the Centre for Media and Communication Research in the School of Communication of Hong Kong Baptist University. Before moving to Hong Kong he worked for many years at the University of Westminster in London, where he was professor of media studies and Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). He is a founding member of the Editorial Board of Media, Culture and Society.