New Media Workshop

This week we will spend the first hour talking to Chester Yung of the SCMP. She will discuss her experiences covering district councils and local politics. Hopefully you have read her two recent articles that I sent to our Google Group last week. Also make sure you have read the note/blog post from Friday about the difference between the district council elections and the Legco by-election.

We will spend the remainder of class learning how to use a wiki for project collaboration, and using our class wiki to brainstorm about district council coverage ideas.

I will also explain how the Wikipedia pages for Hong Kong District Councils, District Council Elections, etc. got created and how anybody can modify them (including candidates, opponents, etc.).

Read on for some of the ideas that came from your blogs this past week:

Many were surprised and frustrated by how little information about Hong Kong’s district councils can be found on the web. Julia found lists of district councillors on the party websites. But she asks “is anybody interested?” and concludes: “The District Council election seems to be a niche issue, even in Hong Kong. I hope that our chinese-speaking classmates are more succsessfull than I am.” Denise remarks: “The internet however, as I realized through this assignment, can only provide information that others have or that others are interested in. The District Council Election is not one of those hot topics.” She points to a webpage about how people are so disinterested, the government considered giving people subsidies to vote. Dayle finds these local elections to be “below the radar,” and also hopes the Chinese-language internet may turn up more detail. Annamaria points out that voter participation in this election is important, despite lack of media and blogger attention: “this election represents an important step to see if Hong Kong people are becoming more involved with their city’s politics and if ultimately they are ready for universal suffrage.” Tia observes: “I would argue that one of the reasons of why there are not many blogs concerned about this election is that more than 66% of voters are over the age of 40, who are not major users of blogging, according to a HKU opinion poll about the 2003 District Council Election.”

On election issues, Sydney observes “It seems that issues are likely to be local to each district council. For example, Central District Council’s issue may centre around the proposed redevelopment of the Central Street Markerts and in Wanchai there may well be voter backlash against the current Urban Renewal Development.” Robert gives us some facts he has found about the number of candidates likely to be fielded by each political party, and points to a good variety of resources on Hong Kong politics which he hopes will bear some fruit as the election date draws closer.

From the Chinese-speakers in our class a lot more detailed information turned up. Maggie got some information about nomination timelines and party candidate lists from Chinese-language news sites. Tracy found a Xinhua report from last Friday showing that voter registration has hit 3.3 million, compared with 1 million who voted four years ago. (Lets see what proportion of the registered voters actually vote!) She also turned up a letter to the Hong Kong people written by Emily Lau after last election – well worth a read. Sudalina found a local discussion forum where discussions about local issues have been taking place. Violet observes: “I’ve realized although most of the issues raised among the district councils seem to be trivial, they are actually tightly related to the residents’ benefits and interests.” She also points to a report that describes how these local elections could serve as a preview for the 2008 Legco elections. She is especially interested in following the Central and Western district not only because it is closest to HKU, “but also that the situation of this district is very complicated and the result of the election is hard to predict, due to the slight change of boundaries in this district and some personnel transformation.” Sunny is interested in the proposed expansion of DC powers in the future. She also asks about how non-permanent residents factor into the political equation: “Since the election always emphasizes on public opinion, how to deal with these who don’t have a PR ID but worked in HK for long time?”

Carol thinks that media coverage of the elections is in itself an important story:
“Among the various changes in the political environment, media control and self-censorship are the most worrisome. But the local media coverage focuses on the Anson Chan and her participation for the Legco By-Election these weeks due to the political bomb instead of the District Council Elections. There’s a significant angle for the story which is based on the attitude and performance of media.”

A few pointed out that this exercise points to the need for better Chinese-language Web2.0 search tools. Carol pointed out that she prefers to use the tags “hongkong politics” rather than “hongkong districtcouncil election” because she says “the former reveals the Hong Kong political environment but the latter can’t.” She also has some ideas for improving the way we organize our tags and feeds.