Division in Public, Division in Media: A Content Analysis of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan's Social Media Posts of Social Movement

Due to historic reasons, even though Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China have similar cultural backgrounds, they have three different political systems and media systems. This study aims to compare and contrast the social media content produced by major media outlets in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China when covering four different political protests: the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution, the 2016 Mong Kok Civil Unrest, the 2015 Taiwan Sunflower Movement, and the 2016 Chinese Memes War. The study found that the three media systems' framing patterns are significantly different. For example, different districts' media blamed each other's government or people for causing the social events. This may be due to the fact that each district's media are influenced by different political systems. This study found the framing patterns of the individual media outlets within the three given media systems are similar, however, even if they have different political affiliations or stands. The reason is likely to be the fact that the selected media are all mainstream media, and therefore they are perhaps subject to their media systems and political pressure about how to disseminate and report the news. The study also found that the given social media coverage of the four protests across the three media systems mostly aligned with expectations for coverage coming from these systems' more traditional media formats.