Hong Kong Media’s Coverage of Political Polarization and its Effects on People’s Political Attitudes and Behaviors

Monday, 29 November 2021, 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at CVA 1022 and on Zoom.

This project explores the possibility of establishing constructive and deliberative public communication among different social groups from a socio-psychological perspective. It asks two questions: first, how news media in Hong Kong cover political disparity; second, to what extent and through what psychological mechanisms such coverage affects civic and political outcomes? The first study is a content analysis on local newspapers’ coverage of political conflicts during 2010–2020. The second study is an online survey experiment based on a representative sample to examine how news stories’ source-level and message-level factors influence people’s political attitudes and public engagement. This research project is funded by the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme from the Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office of The Government of the HKSAR, Project no.: 2020.A2.043.20C.

XINZHI ZHANG is Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research spans political communication and digital media, health communication, and computational journalism. He has obtained two General Research Funds (GRFs) by the University Grants Committee (UGC) in Hong Kong SAR. He has published numerous articles in journals such as Journalism, Computers in Human Behavior, Health Communication, Social Science Computer Review, and Digital Journalism.

For enquiries: mkcheung@hkbu.edu.hk

Organized by Centre for Media and Communication Research, School of Communication and Film