Printing a road to revolution : newspaper and 1911 revolutionary movements in late Qing China

Abstract

This study mainly explores how the development of modern newspapers affects political instability in late imperial China. One part of this study examines the effect of newspaper publishing and circulation on revolutionary movements in late Qing China by employing a uniquely constructed dataset at the prefecture level. Empirical results indicate newspaper has a significant and positive effect on both the outbreak of civil commotions and the likelihood of a prefecture responding to the Wuchang uprising during the 1911 Revolution. Besides, the magnitude of newspaper affecting political instability is considerably large. Another question this study interested is what kind of role newspapermen or journalists played in the revolution mobilization before the outbreak of the 1911 Revolution. Using some individual level data collected from the revolutionary associations in Hubei before the 1911 revolution as a case, this study focuses on the network structure of revolutionary associations and find newspapermen as critical figures in the revolutionary mobilization network, as they not only had more strong ties but also occupied more structural holes in the network, which enables them to be the key brokers to connect different groups and maintain the resilience of revolutionary associations in the face of continuous repression and destruction by the authority before the 1911 revolution.

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology