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Foreign Media Coverage and Protest Outcomes in China: The case of the 2011 Wukan rebellion*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2014

STEVE HESS
STEVE HESS*
Affiliation:
University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, United States of America Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

By looking at the case of the 2011 Wukan rebellion in Guangdong Province, the following article explores the role played by foreign media in influencing the protest's ultimate outcome: an intervention from above by provincial authorities in favour of the villagers. Placing Wukan into a four-level model incorporating local, provincial, national, and international dimensions, this article considers how Wukan might serve as a model for contention that may influence future acts of popular protest in China in the digital age. It suggests that while appealing directly to foreign media can help claimants increase their leverage over local officials and prompt interventions from above, such actions are likely to modify and accelerate, but not fundamentally transform, existing patterns of localized, community-specific acts of contention seen earlier in the Reform Era.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 177 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Special thanks to Thomas Ward, Yu Yanmin, Wei Chunjuan, Kim Setton, Michael McCarthy, and my other colleagues at the University of Bridgeport's College of Public and International Affairs for their valuable feedback and comments in the development of this article.

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