Business as Usual: The UK National Daily Press and the Occupy Central Movement

Colin Sparks wrote this article with an intention to review the coverage of the Occupy Central movement in the UK daily newspapers which began in July 2013 to the time of his writing in January 2015. It involves a small part of the total coverage of Hong Kong in the United Kingdom media whereby it reported of issues such as business, sport as well as the culture which were happening during that period. Several newspapers were published in London and circulated acquainting people with knowledge concerning the movement. According to Sparks, several readers could gain a comprehensive understanding of the Occupy Central movement through reading newspapers in the UK (Sparks, 2015). They included The Daily Mail users, The Daily Express, Daily Star readers, the less elite as well as the socially liberal readers of the Guardian among others.

Moreover, Sparks explains that there was a framing issue which occurred during that period. The newspapers in the UK were involved in framing the Occupy Central movement. According to Sparks, he believes that the national newspapers of the UK were biased and aligned with political parties whereby they took a comprehensive coverage of many issues which tended to reflect their distinct conceptual carriages. On the other hand, the newspapers in the UK framed the Occupy Central movement by sharing all of the titles that the campaign was involved in the struggle of democracy between two parties (Sparks, 2015). They included mostly young demonstrators and both the Hong Kong local government as well as the Chinese national government.

Moreover, it is seen that the frame used by the UK national press was pro-democracy as well as pro-Occupy and strengthened by their handling of the support given to Beijing as well as Hong Kong government by local and international capitalism. According to Sparks, the relationship between the newspapers and business interests under capitalism was not favorable. This is because the papers were hostile to big business and provided a negative coverage concerning the prominent companies which would affect their operations within the country. For instance, the HSBC published a report which showed an unfriendly attitude towards the collaboration between big business and the Chinese government that related to the downgrading of the outlook for Hong Kong stocks to the rise of Occupy Central as well as its subsequent revision in the face of criticism. Thus, it shows that there was a bad relationship between the newspapers and business interests under capitalism.

On the other hand, according to Sparks coverage of the Occupy movement was intended to focus on primary, dramatic as well as confrontational events. His main argument was on the coverage made by newspapers publishers. Spark found that much of the negative coverage was made more so on the Occupy Central movement which affected a majority of the readers as well as the business capitalists. Also, the frame made within the coverage of the struggle between Democrats and the anti-democratic government was his other issue which made sense of his findings. Therefore, according to the results of the paper, it is clear that the general public thought Occupy Central movement as a war between two parties which are the Hong Kong and the young demonstrators.

References

Sparks, C. (October 21, 2015). Business as usual: the UK national daily press and the Occupy Central movement. Retrieved from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17544750.2015.1063525?src=recsys&journalCode=rcjc20