Factors in Hong Kong Residents’ Online Discussion of the Chinese National Symbols Ordinance

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Caixie Tu, whose interest is in Hong Kong residents’ discussions about government ordinances on social media. The key question here is who speaks out on social media, and for what reasons.

Users’ cognitive responses can mediate such processes; this may include news attention, news knowledge, information elaboration, and other aspects, and engagement with heterogeneous information sources may be especially important. Individuals’ issue involvement, which may be value-relevant or outcome-relevant, may also affect their level of engagement in such debates.

How do the two types of issue involvement mediate the influence of social media information on social media expression, then? How is this further affected by individuals’ perceptions of their own agency in the issue, and by their perceptions of other people’s agency?

This was studied here in the context of Hong Kong residents’ responses to a 2022 ordinance related to the use or defacing of the Chinese flag and other national symbols, which has been used to suppress and criminalise pro-democracy protests. This was assessed through an online survey several months after the ordinance was enacted.

The study found that people with higher social media news exposure were also more willingness to express their opinions on social media; value-relevant issue involvement further mediated willingness to express their views; outcome-relevant issue involvement mediated perceived behavioural restraints. This points to a sequential mediation path.

Whether users choose to express their opinions online depends on their negative cognition of reactance, and individuals regard speaking out online as a means of countering perceived behavioural restraints and express their refutation of the ordinance.