CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.3 Research Purpose and Thesis Structure
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－5.15ANTI GOVERNMENT’S DONATION OF 100 MILLION YUAN TO JINAN
UNIVERSITY PROTEST & DISQUALIFICATION OF LAWMAKER （反利益輸送崔 世安下台及 DQ議員）
Another significant event was a citizens' protest on 15 May 2016, opposing the Macau government and public entity Macau Foundation for donating a vast sum of money, 100 million yuan (estimated at TWD 480.4 million or 123 million patacas), to the mainland-based Jinan University, where Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai On is one of the board members, suspicions of advantage transfers arose. This protest is generally known as anti-donation of 100 million to Jinan University. This protest caused directly-elected lawmaker Sou Ka Hou (蘇嘉豪) to be summoned to court on a charge of aggravate disobedience and that could have led to him losing his legislative seat. Sou resumed his post in July 2018. Macau Foundation's funding comes from the city's gaming tax and it always plays a significant role in supporting local associations' development with financial support. Over the past decade, the number of the city’s association recorded quadrupled in number. However, the increasing number of associations does not seem to further propel Macau residents to take an active role in expressing their views on social issues, instead of being a part of the pro-establishment camp. Associations are the key component of civil society; however, the increasing number of the city's association seems to fail to play an active role in propelling Macau to civil society.
The four massive social actions, the two former ones occurred in the time before information technology was as prominent as nowadays while the situation had undergone swift changes when the latter two incidents occurred. Therefore, in this paper I will only focus on the latter incidents and their related civic activism and how they interact with online media.
1.3RESEARCHPURPOSEANDTHESISSTRUCTURE
Macau has been experiencing unbelievable changes over the past two decades, especially since 2004 when the monopoly of gaming industry was liberalised. While witnessing many significant changes, both good and bad, have imposed tremendous changes on the society and myself over the years. During the past decade I had been wandering the city as a confused reporter, trying to figure out my role, my position, and
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how should someone like me record these changes with our privileged yet underrated role — privileged to report news as a kind of truth, and yet unable to persuade people the kind of truth we convey is the kind of truth that leads to reflection and a better society. Those changes and questions have haunted me and pushed me to re-position myself to deal with these changes and consider how to re-adjust the role the media, particularly news outlet should play.
It is with these questions in mind I embarked on my journey in Taiwan as a graduate student and coming up with this topic—something that is quintessential in our time to record the picture of Macau and to reconstruct the idea of “Macau People.”
When surfing social network sites, the term “Macau people” is often seen in netizens' comments. Such a term also prompts me to rethink who and what "Macau people" are.
Within the writing process, I hope I can find what Macau society should be and what
“Macau people” should do about it. I am an immigrant, not born in Macau and yet have been living in this city for more than two decades and it has become my hometown.
Being a reporter, I want to know whether or not the city’s online media will tend to be homogeneous or heterogeneous and how they develop and their attitude towards some social movements. Being “Macau people”, I hope this thesis will give an answer to my question: what kind of society should Macau head towards becoming?
Macau is a small city and it has been always "neglected" in academic terms.
Furthermore, there has not been a lot of English research about Macau, particularly about online media, social movements and civil society. I believe my thesis will fill this gap, as well as benefiting both people outside and in Macau to better understand this society.
For me, I believe the completion of this paper will be the biggest pleasure in my life, as a perfect full stop to my career of 10 years of being a reporter. Furthermore, I believe I will better understand the meaning of the term “Macau people” and better understand the latest situation of the city’s civil society after finishing it, and I hope this thesis will at least inspire and give hope to “Macau people” who are confused and would like to search for an answer and let them know they are not alone. Last but not least, the thesis will be served as a caesura and the summary of my 10 years’ as a reporter regardless of whether I will continue to be a journalist or not, this thesis will be a record of my thoughts, my pursuits, and my love for the city.
There will be five chapters in this thesis –introduction, literature review, research questions and methods, results and conclusion. In chapter 1, with the protest against
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the perks bill, I outlined a rough contour of Macau’s online media and traditional print media regarding the quantity and different forms of content. Meanwhile I also simply compared four online media' attitudes towards the protest when they reported it. In order to understand Macau’s online media better and the situation of social movements without knowledge of its society, economy and political system thus a brief history of the three aspects are included in this chapter.
As this thesis is about the association between the online media and social movement, particularly those civic activists, thus a brief about some influential social movements including 12.3 incident and anti-perks bill protest are part of the chapter.
Whether such association has an impact on the development of civil society in Macau is another main importance in this paper thus in chapter 2 I focus on the literature about online, social media and civil society, as well the association between the three aspects.
Apart from them I also cover the specific characteristics of the online, social movements and civil society in Macau.
In chapter 3 I focus on research questions and method. There are two main research methods – discourse analysis and semi-constructed in-depth interviews – applied in this paper. Considering the association between the online media with different standpoints and social movements is what this paper is going to investigate thus the question design will be divided into two parts. One part is about the basic information of each of the four media outlets while the questions in the second part are aimed at investigating the association between the three elements. Apart from them, I also outline the main characteristics of four online media which will be helpful to get a rough contour of online media in the city.
Chapter 4 and 5 are the discussion and conclusion.