Sampling

For this report, we conducted thirty-four qualitative, in-depth interviews with foreign correspondents from Europe and the United States who have used chat apps to cover recent political unrest. Our interviews focused on Hong Kong, China, and the surrounding region. Questions included:

• How did you cover the 2014 protests?

• How do you use chat apps during political unrest coverage (during the 2014 Hong Kong protests and since in those areas)?

• Can you provide examples of how you used chats apps in comparison to other social networking sites during and since the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests?

• What are the major challenges you encountered when using chat apps?

  Hong Kong is the primary Asian hub for most global news organizations—the center of a region that has seen significant use of chat apps in newsgathering, and a city that has witnessed recent mass political unrest. Hong Kong and its surrounding regions offer rich context to study spaces in chat app reportage by foreign correspondents.

  
  The Admiralty protest site. Source: Pasu Au Yeung.¹²

  In order to identify respondents for this report, we selected journalists based on a snowball sampling method. To narrow the list of respondents, we first chose reporters who covered the 2014 Hong Kong protests, some of whom were based in China, and others in Hong Kong. We narrowed the list to journalists working for major international news organizations, including reporters employed by broadcasters, print and digital news, and magazines. Then, we interviewed reporters recommended to us by individuals in our first sample of foreign correspondents. In interviews, we discussed coverage of the 2014 Hong Kong protests and subsequent coverage of political unrest in the region.