Shifting political power and news sources: The case in Hong Kong's political transition

Early studies on news sources in Hong Kong have shown that news was dominated by government institutions,among which the executive was always the main source. However, recent studies have questioned these findings. This article examines the citation of sources in reports of the progress of a controversial legislative bill in three Chinese-language newspapers. It found that in the final years of Hong Kong's political transition, the legislature was dominant as a news source, not the executive. The finding is explained by source availability and journalistic selection, of which the latter is hypothesized to be influenced by society's aspiration for democracy.