CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.3 Online Media Impact on Civic Activism
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4.3ONLINE MEDIA IMPACT ON CIVIC ACTIVISM
This section will focus on analysing interviews in an attempt to responding the research question – the impact of online media on civic activism, explicitly the two anti-perks bill protests and the massive action protested against the government’s donation to Jinan University. I will first analyse these two media camps’ attitudes towards such massive actions, whether they were involved in mobilising people to take part in the protests, and what they had done to promote the anti–government actions will be also addressed.
4.3.1 ATTITUDE TOWARDS ANTI-GOVERNMENT ACTIONS
In general, most online media outlets pointed out that they have not had a consistent standpoint towards anti- government protests and do not have an intuitive to carry out strategies to mobilise people to take part in such kind of collective actions.
The pro-democracy camp would like to pay attention to those against establishment actions. However, their rival UTV said that such actions would not be its main concern.
Compared to other social issues, pro-democracy media Macau Concealers said that when there was collective action against the establishment it would like investigate further to see whether anything was especially behind the relevant incidents to attract the public’s attention.
Choi, the former editor-in-chief of this media outlet, was also the only reporter for this online media from 2014 to 2016 and quit early in 2017. Elaborating on Macau Concealers’ overall attitude towards civic activism, Choi said,
“It depends on [the nature] of the incident. …… we are not opposing something just for the sake of opposing it”.
In recalling the anti-perks incidents and the related collective actions, Choi pointed out that Macau Concealers later agreed with the bill being withdrawn. He said,
“Seeing the government was drafting such a bill, of course we considered it is a problem. Firstly, we reported this incident……. next we saw this incident worth drawing more people’s attention to it. We hope to inform more people about this incident and allow them to express their views about it. Then our association New Macau Association wanted to organise a protest to urge [the government] to withdraw the bill. We agreed with
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it thus we assisted in and carried out relevant actions to make more people pay attention to the incident. Therefore, we also shot a video so that we could show what was happening”.
Another pro-democracy media All About Macau said that it gives more notice to collective antagonistic actions as she believed the reasons behind those actions involved social injustice. Its director Ng said,
“These two cases [the perks-bill and the donation] caused harm to Macau, resulting in loss of public confidence. We questioned why the chief executive be allowed the privilege of criminal immunity [in the bill] ……that should be opposed. There are many poor schools in mainland China and we did not oppose donating money to mainland China. But we questioned the rationality of the government’s decision for choosing this university. We have to ensure that public money is being spent reasonably”.
“As I have already mentioned we support the underprivileged, as if there is any opposition and they really want to state their appeal, we will support them even though some of their appeals are not related to the public interest. As we mentioned before we must speak out for the most marginalised and underprivileged groups. That is why we cannot have support from business groups or advertisements. If we keep silent to those injustices and do what the traditional media do, which just reporting when and where, I think that is meaningless. This mode of traditional media is so boring and we shall not be fettered”.
However, the pro-establishment media UTV said it prefers reporting news about the government such as public policies and public consultations, community leaders and residents’ opinions, instead of social movements. Loi, who heads the media outlet, said the following:
“We help [the government] by explaining to general public in an easy to understand way about the contents of the government policies that are undergoing the public consultation [process] because the government prefers using official ways [to promote its policies], in other words, it uses the ways which it understands but we don’t”.
Loi also said that they also invite community representatives to attend UTV programmes, as well interviewing residents or youths so that they can express their
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feelings about some hot issues such as using public transport and driving cars or producing a related programme. He also stated that regarding some civic activism whether UTV supports it or not depends on whether the campaigns are reasonable or not. He stated the following:
“We neither oppose for the sake of opposition nor support for the sake of support. [If the government] does not do its work well, as you see from the transportation and public works critics”.
It is not surprising that these two media camps have different feedback on civic activism in general, while the pro-democracy camps tend to support such action while UTV’s attitude is ambiguous.
Of the three online media outlets, Macau Concealers has taken a more of an initiative in the protests against the government. The analysis of its content shows that Macau Concealers had carried out an online photo-campaign urging the government to withdraw the bill. Apart from that, it also posted messages to urge people to take part in the protest on 25 May.
However, the other pro-democracy media outlet – All About Macau – seemed relatively quiet and did not come up with any action to persuade people to join the protests. However, it published two messages on 25 and 29 May to express its thanks those who took part in the protests.
4.3.2 ONLINE MEDIA’S MOBILISING
What the two media camps think about their influence on such anti-government actions is significant thus I have collected their views about the mobilising power of online media and what they do to draw the public attention to the specific issue they want to address.
These two media camps both believe that online media have power to mobilise people but such power is not strong. However, the two pro-democracy media outlets are split over whether media should be involved in mobilising the public or not while pro-establishment UTV thinks that media should not be involved in mobilising the public for civic activism.
Pro-democracy All About Macau sees some media does have a role in mobilising the public but their power is not strong enough. Ng who heads the company stressed
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that media outlets have no reason to be involved in campaign mobilising instead they should conduct in-depth reports or investigations. She said,
“We have no reasons to take the initiative of launching a protest and that should be belong to civil groups. Media must uphold the public right to know thus we report and comment…… to ensure the public know what is happening”.
However, Ng said that All About Macau will repeatedly report on an individual topic if they considered it important, including asking people to give comments and investigate further as they did with the Land Law. Her media was not involved in mobilising any social movements, just focusing on reporting what was happening. She stated the following:
“We did not encourage people [to take part in the protests], we just informed the general public about what was happening we did not urge them [to get involved in the actions in 2014]. To inform the general public what a citizen should or should not do is considered agitation or something worse. Even at the end we posted a message to express our thanks as so many people took to the streets to demand justice, this was being a citizen and supporting civil society”.
This senior journalist pointed out that All About Macau has been consistent in its role of being a media by investigating more behind the incidents.
Pro-establishment UTV agrees that online media have a certain power to mobilise people but his media has never been involved and in accordance with its official stance will not change its philosophy.
However, pro-democracy media Macau Concealers believed online media must have impact on social movements otherwise the protests against the perks bill would not have happened but he admitted that the real mobilising power of online media now is hard to define and its line has been becoming vague since there are the many Facebook pages or other social network sites. The former editor-in-chief Choi said:
“It is not now necessary for online media to take the role. Of course, they can still get involved, but its de facto role in such events is not that significant. In fact, the original function of online media is reporting and it continue this function. To report, to explore and to reveal them should be the basis of online media”.
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Overall, to attract people’s attention to the on-going incidents, Macau Concealers pointed out that they used some keywords such as public money to draw the public’s attention to the incidents. Meanwhile, All About Macau said that they preferred investigating deeply to encourage the general public to continue to pay attention to the incidents. However, UTV said it preferred covering issues related to livelihoods.
Since only Macau Concealers has not only reported a great deal about these incidents but had also carried out actions and published messages to promote the protest on 25 May thus what this media did to mobilise the general public will be discussed later on.
Choi who headed this pro-democracy media recognised the mobilising function this online media developed in 2014’s protests. However, he also admitted that online media has its passive and active sides. Its active side, he stated which is similar to the traditional media includes revealing what was happening to the public, collecting comments and giving opinions. In this way the incident would continue to develop.
He said that it was passive for the media have to wait for comments from the government which could help keep the issue on the boil. Therefore, there also had been interaction on how the authorities reacted to the matter and how the media responded to the reaction and the media can continue to write reports. In recollecting what Macau Concealers did to urge local people to take part in the protests in 2014, Choi admitted that at the beginning he had not realised the problems with the bill until the problems had been addressed by his association. Meanwhile, he also realised that it was hard to find a complete news report about the bill. He said,
“Regarding the anti-perks incident, we had to cut the incident into small pieces and explain each part explicitly. Because of our reports about the issue and the government’s remarks of may make the public angry……we kept asking people to comment on the case, plus the government’s response so that the news could last for one or two weeks …… so that more people noticed it”.
“Furthermore, we needed some promotion activities to let more people know about this case. To the Internet, I had thought there should be an interactive way, not just published information. We wanted to raise a new method to let the general public express their stance. Macau people are used to just reading but they do not or daren’t take to the streets. ……That year, media in Hong Kong like Apple Daily had done the same thing. They
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had come up with mobilisation tactics such as writing songs or doing something to prolong the incident ……we shot videos and took photos. In that year [2014] there was the Sunflower Movement [in March in Taiwan], the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong [in September] and Anti-perks protests in Macau. Of course, there was no direct relation between them.
Somehow, I was inspired therefore I thought it was okay to make a video or take photos”.
He also said,
“So, we told people to hold a placard [to show their stance on the incident]. Many people slanged many things, but we wanted them to take action to express their views with holding a placard stating ‘withdraw it’.
Considering that the time was urgent and if there was no any antagonistic action the bill would be passed. To withdraw it is the only thing we can do and we asked people to do such an act. Once we knew people attitude we could continue. Taking account of the interaction of the Internet and the flexibility of online media we believed that what we were doing benefited to the incident. De facto not only holding the placard but also many people commented on it and we published what people wrote. With the Internet……we could know what audiences read and how they reacted. In fact, Hong Kong media had their role in assisting the incident to continue burning since they put the case as their front page for several days. Those factors result in so many people took to the streets to express their opposition”.
In an attempt to get people to continue following the latest developments in an individual incident, pro-democracy Macau Concealers prefers to emphasise some key terms such as money. This media outlet’s editor-in-chief Choi said,
“If you want to draw people’s attention the easiest way is to magnify the amount of money involved, for example, [when reporting the perks-bill incident] …….we stressed the amount of money and we chose an impressive word to state the amount of public money that it would involve [once the bill was enacted]…… we used easy and key concepts or words to make an impression on people ”.
“We also named these two incidents and after naming them they seemed to go on like a soap opera on the TV so that everyone would keep curious
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enough to what would happen next. If you put those components together they can become a protest. In that way it is easier for people to understand what’s happened. Many news reports just simply tell the case but with no key points. That is because of media’s self-censorship and self-constraints so they did not emphasise what should be paid attention to therefore the man-in-the-street had difficulty in grasping the problem. Our media simplified the case by emphasising the important points. We turned our emphasis on the cost or value. Based on my observation, the things that draw Macau people the most is money, how much something costs,. The thing the general public care about the most is money”.
Considering that local people care about the public money, Choi said their articles about the incident involving Jinan University had addressed the amount of public money it might involve. Local people are more sensitive to how the government use its funds than anything else.
However, when dealing with the donation incident and its related protest on 15 May 2016, the pro-democracy camp – Macau Concealers and All About Macau – seem have been more constrained. They seemed to be returning to the role of just reporting and taking less of an initiative in promoting the action. Neither media had carried out any action to promote this protest or released any message to express thanks but simply wrote actual reports on the event. Definitely, there were many differences between the two incidents which resulted in specific aspects being addressed.
However, the obvious change in Macau Concealers’s attitude is what I am going to address. In the next part I shall turn my focus to discussing why there has been a significant change in Macau Concealers.
4.3.3 MACAU CONCEALERS : LESS ACTIVISM, MORE MEDIA
Obviously, compared to 2016’s anti-donation protest, the role that Macau Concealers played was more than the media should. However, regarding the incident about anti-donation event and its protest, Choi said that they just reported the incident and investigated more to get the general public’s attention and did not need to come up with any plan to move more people to take part in the collective action.
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Choi admitted that they have always been seeking a better role for their media outlet to play and what happened in 2014 was an “extreme” case and his media had no intention of being an activist media. He said,
“After that [2014’s protests] we are not always thinking about being an activist media we neither have the intention to do so. Looking back to 2014 we were not the only one, Hong Kong [media] did something to mobilise [people], they composed songs to get a specific event to continue. We had neither intended to be such media nor did we intend to be active by raising an initiative or taking any action. …... protests in 2016 or in recent year the most we have done has to be active in reporting when we wanted any individual event to continue being noticed…… or publicising protests instead of organising any actions. I do not think there is a necessity for us to take a leading role in organising actions”.
Choi also said that it has been learning how to be a media over the past few years.
Is Macau Concealers an activist online media? According to Choi, it isn’t. this media has never thought it would be an activist online media. He said the following:
“Actually, I just want to run a media. …… Actually do not often [act as an activist media]. We never think being a new media with a role of social activism. We do not have an intention to do so either. But such a case just lasted during the anti-perks incident. Actually, that is the only time we did.”
“I think nowadays Macau does not need an activist media which has to turn each social topic into a massive action……it depends on whether the incident is worth it or not. I think it will be enough if any political groups want to do so …. every political group has its Facebook or other Internet platforms which are similar to media. They can also spread the [messages]
and do promotions. The role of Macau Concealers now is to focus on reporting news, revealing what behind incidents”.
However, Su (2017) pointed “the role of Macau Concealers in mobilising the public, spreading information and stimulating discussion during social movements marked it out as an activist media.”
Choi concluded that Macau Concealers should continue to uphold the role of being media after searching direction for several years and he believed that local civil groups can mobilise people to take part in their civil actions through their networks, it is not something only the online media can do.