2 Global connectivity and local politics SARS, talk radio, and public opinion Eric Kit-wai Ma and Joseph Man Chan In times of global health crises, local communities are connected regionally and globally to form an interlocking web of flows. This heightened con- nectivity is both material and imaginary. People, diseases, money, supplies, technologies, information, images, and imaginations travel around the globe at high speed. However, in such circumstances, global connectivity is not a flooding of homogeneous patterns of practices, influences and effects, but an activation of local politics in the specific sociocultural contexts of connected locales. This chapter examines the media politics of Hong Kong during the health crisis of SARS in 2003, with the aim of mapping the local manifes- tations of global connectivity. At the peak of the Hong Kong SARS outbreak in 2003, Albert Cheng, the influential radio host of the morning talk radio program “Tea Cup in a Storm,” was named the “Hong Kong Chief before Ten.” The program started at 7 a.m. every weekday and ended at 10 a.m. During the crisis, the studio was described as the command center of the Hong Kong Special Admin- istrative Region (HKSAR). These popular labels suggested that, in the eyes of the public at least, the HKSAR chief executive and his office did badly while Albert Cheng and his radio program better served Hong Kong people in managing the crisis. In fact, Cheng not only intervened during his airtime: after the program ended each day, he campaigned at charity initiatives and mobilized self-help programs for the health professionals. The interface between media discourses and social actions became direct, triggering a special media–social dialectic quite different from commonly understood broadcast media. This typifies what has been described as the “surrogate democracy function of the media” in post-1997 Hong Kong. (Chan and So 2003) This surrogacy, to be explicated in a moment, can be seen as the trespassing of media personalities into governance. Dominant conceptions of the media, such as liberal pluralist and critical perspectives of media studies, cannot be easily applied to the boundary-crossing media system in social crises in rapidly changing societies such as Hong Kong. In this chapter, by analyzing the 20 Eric Kit-wai Ma and Joseph Man Chan specific sociopolitical conditions of Hong Kong’s media surrogacy, we want to theorize the media as the “drive engine” of public opinion apparatus in times of social crisis. The case of Hong Kong We want to posit the SARS story in Hong Kong’s specific sociopolitical conditions and analyze how the transnational SARS crisis was connected to local media politics. Thus a brief review of the Hong Kong case is essential. In the years after the Second World War, Hong Kong fostered a strong local identity that was distinctly different from that of mainland China. In order to maintain political and economic stability, both the colonial and the Chinese government refrained from attempting to mobilize strong nationalistic sentiments in the territory. (Leung 1996) The media took up the role of cultivating the imagination of a collective Hong Kong community in cultural rather than political terms. This mediated imagined community was sustained by the great difference in ways of life in the colony as opposed to the main- land. Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese had very different lifestyles, daily routines, career patterns, aspirations, and values. Although there had been frequent exchanges between Hong Kong and China since the open-door policy in the 1970s, life across the China–Hong Kong border was still conspicu- ously different. (Ma 1999) These differences can be described in two broad categories of state-led and market-led features. Hong Kong had a weak (or invisible) state and a strong market, exhibiting a highly consumerist lifestyle; lives on the mainland, in contrast, were marked by a highly visible state and a deficient market. Hong Kong politics was absorbed into colonial “mana- gerialism” (King 1975; Law 1998) while mainland politics was turned into frequent “revolutions” and campaigns. However, Hong Kong’s sociopolitical conditions have been undergoing drastic changes since the sovereignty reversion in 1997. Here we are not offering a sociopolitical analysis of post-1997 Hong Kong. Rather, we present a few discursive formations, which can contextualize Hong Kong’s mediated politics. Since 1997, there has been a clash between progressive political desire and regressive political infrastructure. During the decolonization and democ- ratization programs in the 1990s, proposals of political reforms had encouraged the development of high expectations on democratic politics. In the final years of British rule, Hong Kong developed a dual power structure in which the British and the Chinese were fighting for political control over the colony. This political duality provided a contingent space for participation of the general public. Exploiting this political space, Hong Kong people had voiced in the media their demands for more progressive democratic reform. However, since 1997, the dual power structure has regressed to the con- servative and weak administration of the Hong Kong Special Administrative SARS, talk radio, and public opinion 21 Region. HKSAR government is backed by an autonomy licensed by the Chinese central government but not legitimized by democratic election. Unfulfilled political expectations clash with regressive political reality that turns into frequent protest and opposition mediated by the populist media. However, the Hong Kong government, which is not legitimized by a demo- cratic polity, has not been able to renegotiate new ideological consent. The economic crisis in 1997 and its after-effects have also triggered a series of chain reactions. The discourse of unfailing capitalism could no longer serve as a stable base from which local identity was built. A widening gap between the rich and poor breeds despair and unrest, and at the same time the myth of upward mobility, which was a dominant discourse in the colonial years, has failed to absorb and dissipate the disappointments of the underprivileged as it did in the past. These changes have generated strong social sentiments, which have spilled over into different walks of life. Workers are disappointed with structural unemployment, new immigrants from mainland China are tangled in the controversial issue of the right of abode, middle-class families have been struck by the collapse of the property market, lawyers are protesting against the erosion of the rule of law, and doctors are doing the same against deteriorating working conditions in the medical field. At the same time, the Hong Kong government has accused the general public and the media of spilling out too much bitterness. These disputes dilute social solidarity and encourage dissolution and opposition. The discourses of renationalization, downward mobility, failed market economy, and weak local governance have cultivated a context for a populist and confrontational media. As we will see in the case study that follows, these local conditions were crucial in shaping the unique media configurations during the health crisis of SARS. Perspectives on media studies and social crisis In the Hong Kong case, dominant media theories such as critical political economy or the liberal pluralist perspectives do not easily capture the com- plexity of the current moment. In critical media studies, the media are ide- ological agents reproducing dominant social relations. (Curran 2002) Among the critical culturalists,1 the focus is the hegemonic articulation between the media and dominant economic and especially ideological processes; whereas critical materialists such as Golding and Murdock (2000) stress the political economy of media institutions. In either perspective, however, the media by and large are agents of ideological reproduction, and in particular major parts of the ideological apparatus of state control. In contrast, liberal plura- lists argue that market competition promotes diversity and checks state power in a media forum where different social parties and agents are free to express themselves. The media form a market place of ideas, and it is a platform of public opinion monitoring the performance of the state. Together with a 22 Eric Kit-wai Ma and Joseph Man Chan democratic polity, the media serve not as apparatuses of state control but as watchdogs promoting timely social and cultural revisions. Media analysts with respective theoretical inclinations tend to follow prescribed lines of analysis and restrict themselves to their discrete theoretical camps. Critical media theorists see the civil society as a hierarchy of social groups with those in the subordinate positions accepting the dominance of the status quo. Media professionals are socialized within media institutions to produce dominant voices in the seemingly non-ideological language of professionalism. In contrast, liberal pluralists see the civil society as competing social groups advancing their interests with relatively equal opportunities. Media professionals are autonomous and relay social voices professionally. The media articulate social sentiments and voices to form public opinions, which promote social debates and foster consensus. The combined effect of these processes is the functioning of a vibrant and democratic society. Yet, critical theorists are skeptical about this non-ideological notion of public opinion; they consider public