Testing the bidirectional causation among media attention and the protest scale: the case of Hong Kong

Abstract

Media attention is crucial for the success of social movements. In contemporary hybrid media ecology, news media, social media, and on-site protests interact with each other during social movements. The present study investigated the relationships among the scale of street protests, attention from news media, and social media in the Anti-ELAB movement in Hong Kong. The results show that attention from pro-democracy and nonlocal media significantly influences fluctuations in the protest scale. Moreover, they closely correlate with changes in protest size, highlighting the importance of political parallelism in media coverage during contentious movements. We also found a two-way relationship between the degree of social media attention in the LIHKG forum and the scale of on-site protests. This suggests that social media not only serves as a platform for public discourse on protest events but that it also acts as a mobilizing force for participants. Additionally, our results indicate that news media has a significant influence on shaping attention trends on social media, thus confirming the effectiveness of traditional media in driving social movements in Hong Kong, even amid the rise of social media platforms.

Keywords:

• Media attention
• social media
• protest scale
• anti-ELAB movement
• political parallelism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The present study was supported by the Project of the National Social Science Fund of China (20BXW105), the Research Institute of Internet and Governance in Guangdong Province, and the Research Base of Big Data and Public Communication in Guangzhou City.

Notes on contributors

Jinjin Zhou

Jinjin Zhou is currently an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University. Her research interests include computational communication and political communication.

Zhi-Jin Zhong

Zhi-Jin Zhong is a professor in the School of Journalism and Communication and a researcher at the Institute of Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao Development Studies at Sun Yat-sen University of China. Her research interests include public opinion and political communication.