ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the development of Hong Kong’s opinion media, referring to the range of media outlets whose main contents are constituted by opinions and discourses instead of news and information understood in the narrow sense. It focuses specifically on talk radio and Internet alternative media. Radio phone-in talk shows on public affairs had existed in the city for decades, but it exerted substantial influence on public discourses and public opinion mainly in the period between the mid-1990s to the late 2000s. Meanwhile, Internet alternative media – mainly in the forms of online radio stations and commentary websites – emerged in the city in the early 2000s and proliferated since 2012. Their development was closely tied to the struggle for press freedom in the media system and the rise of mobilization in society at large. The transformation of opinion media illustrates how the space for counter-public communication in Hong Kong has been dissociated from the mainstream media over time. More broadly, this chapter studies opinion media to illustrate the continual reconfiguration of the media system in Hong Kong amidst social and political changes.
