In recent years, a growing literature in journalism studies has discussed the increasing importance of social media in European and American news production. Adding to this body of work, we explore how Indian and foreign correspondents reporting from India used social media during the coverage of the Delhi gang rape; how journalists represented the public sphere in their social media usage; and, what this representation says about the future of India's public sphere. Throughout our analysis, Manuel Castells' discussion of 'space of flows' informs our examination of journalists' social media uses. Our article reveals that while the coverage of the Delhi gang rape highlights an emerging, participatory nature of storytelling by journalists, this new-found inclusiveness remains exclusive to the urban, educated, connected middle and upper classes. We also find that today in India, social media usage is rearticulated around pre-existing journalistic practices and norms common to both Indian reporters working for English-language media houses and foreign correspondents stationed in India.

In recent years, scholars have identified many of the ways social networking platforms have shaped journalistic practices and norms (Anderson & Caumont, 2014; Harrison, 2010; Hermida, 2010). These platforms have brought changes to fundamental aspects of journalism, such as crowdsourcing and verification practices (Wardle & Williams, 2010). Increasingly, researchers have explored how journalists have interacted with audiences and other journalists within digital spaces of production. In news production, these journalistic interactions have taken on a heightened significance by blurring familiar boundaries and allowing audiences to be co-creators in "new communicative spaces" (Peters, 2012, p. 4). Describing Twitter, Hermida coined the term "ambient journalism" to refer to "awareness systems that offer [journalists] means to collect, communicate, share, and display news and information in the periphery of a user's awareness" (Hermida, 2010). These digital spaces of journalistic interactions provide, as Couldry argues, a platform for the emergence of "inter-local spaces" of news production and consumption, meaning increasing connection among different localities (Dickens, Couldry, & Fotopoulou, 2015). Online journalistic practices extend across wider communities of interest (Couldry et al., 2016) and can include "liminal viewpoints" (Papacharissi, 2014). Online journalistic interactions also often involve an element of "journalistic boundary work" varying across cultural, socio-politico, and technological contexts (Carlson & Lewis, 2015; Lamont & Molnár, 2002). Building on this 701163S MSXXX10.

In the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, a former British territory in southern China returned to the People’s Republic as a semi-autonomous enclave in 1997, media capture has distinct characteristics. On one hand, Hong Kong offers a case of media capture in an uncensored media sector and open market economy similar to those of Western industrialized democracies. Yet Hong Kong’s comparatively small size, close proximity, and broad economic exposure to the authoritarian markets and politics of neighboring Mainland China, which practices strict censorship, place unique pressures on Hong Kong’s nominally free press. Building on the literature on media and politics in Hong Kong post-handover and drawing on interviews with journalists in Hong Kong, this article examines the dynamics of media capture in Hong Kong. It highlights how corporate-owned legacy media outlets are increasingly deferential to the Beijing government’s news agenda, while social media is fostering alternative spaces for more skeptical and aggressive voices. This article develops a scholarly vocabulary to describe media capture from the perspective of local journalists and from the academic literature on media and power in Hong Kong and China since 1997.

This article probes the catalytic features of social media in civic participation and mass civil disobedience in Hong Kong’s 2014 protests, and conceptualizes digital activism in terms of mobilization, organization, and persuasion. It makes use of in-depth interviews, in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, with 40 of the leading users of social media during the protests. These included, first and foremost, student activists, as well as opposition figures and journalists who reported on the protests. The article finds that the velocity and scale of social media have strengthened protesters’ ability to mobilize and organize, on the Internet and in the streets. Yet, these advantages have not carried over into persuasion of previously uncommitted individuals. Protesters encountered two main obstacles to persuasion via social media: the multitude of messages enabled by social media and the age segmentation of media. As a result, the movement’s social media efforts generated new attention and created digital space for activism, but did not persuade a durable majority of Hongkongers of the movement’s legitimacy. The Umbrella Movement may not have persuaded Hongkongers that their movement and tactics were valid or wise, but the existence of social media allowed protest leaders to document their motivations and conduct, and blunt less flattering narratives in legacy media.