ABSTRACT
This chapter examines an anti-nuclear incident in the province of Shandong: in 2007, property owners in the tourist district of Yintan mounted protests against a state enterprise’s proposal to build a nuclear power plant nearby, in the Hongshiding area near the city of Rushan. In this chapter, we study how actors in an environmental struggle used the media to generate political opportunities. Using alternative media, protesters used new technologies to build networks which attracted influential allies. Subsequently, the issue was further reported by traditional media, which magnified elite instability in the face of the problem, and created clear political opportunities for the protesters. Together, traditional media and new media combined to create an expanded media ecosystem, which generated political opportunities through its media cycle.
