Prints for Social Change: Hong Kong’s Community Newspaper Movement from 2018 to 2020

While digital technologies have fundamentally transformed our ways of living, there is a renaissance of ‘print media’ in recent years. Various forms of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) publishing, such as zines and self-published books are widely employed by activists round the world as “resistive texts” that challenge mainstream media narratives and mobilize collective actions. A notable example is community newspapers, which are broadly defined as those “serving a defined geographic community, often in a small city or rural setting”. Usually, the scholars investigate community newspapers through the prisms of “alternative media” or “community media”, regarding them as a tool for collective expression, grassroots engagement, and community development. However, the material nature of print media, which differentiate itself from the digital counterparts, is rarely discussed by the extant literature. Why and how does print media still matter in social movements during the digital age? How are they different from digital communication tools in term of political functions? Regarding the rise of print activism across the globe, this article will conduct a case study of Hong Kong’s community newspaper movement from 2018 to 2020. In Hong Kong, the history of community newspapers can be dated back to the 1970s, and since then, they were used by a few neighborhood organizations. The Umbrella Movement, a territory-wide civil disobedience campaign for electoral democracy, ended in 2014, and gave rise to a new wave of localism in Hong Kong. In such political context, a community newspaper movement was initiated by a citizen media platform, Inmediahk, in 2018. The scale of the movement was largely expanded during the Anti-Extradition protest in 2019/20, as part of their anti-authoritarian struggle. In-depth interviews with volunteers, distributors, and collectors, as well as a textual analysis of community newspapers will be conducted to explore the political potentialities of print media. This article will argue that touchable print products, like community newspapers, have become affective objects that can create a sense of intimacy, and affinity to the group. They help grassroots groups transcend the echo chambers in digital world, and reach out people on the ground. This article hopes to contribute to the scholarly discussion on political communication, social movement studies and alternative cultural practice. Practically speaking, this article will present a unique, non-digital form of DIY civic participation that may inspire community organizations, social workers and activists who are fighting for community empowerment.