The Birth and Growth of ”Independent Gatekeepers”: NTU News E-Forum and InMediaHK

On 18 March 2014, a group of students and social activists occupied Legislative Yuan so as to protest the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA). This movement is now called 318 Movement, also known as the Sunflower Movement. Some students from the NTU Graduate Institute of Journalism and other schools went to report the movement voluntarily, and published the report on Facebook fan page, NTU News E Forum, originally a platform run by NTU Graduate Institute of Journalism. Because of the first-hand reports of the movement, the fan page attracted more than 130,000 readers in three weeks, and became one of the most important media in the movement. On 22 September of the same year, Hong Kong students initiated a class boycott to protest the PRC Standing Committee of the National People''s Congress''s intervention on the nomination system of the election of the Chief Executive in the 2016 and 2017 Hong Kong Political Reform. A few days later, Hong Kong police used tear gas to expel protesters, which then triggered a two-month occupation movement. This is so-called the Umbrella Movement. In this movement, Hong Kong independent media InmediaHK published breaking news and photos almost without any delay, which helped attract a great amount of donation and create huge site traffic. The author of this dissertation was one of the reporters in NTU News E Forum, and also attended the Umbrella Movement reporting. This dissertation aims at combining the author’s personal experiences in the two movements with her interviews with participants of the two media to present emerging challenges for journalism professional ethics in the internet era. This dissertation also explores how these two news media have utilized social media in their news presentation. The dissertation further provides suggestions for future independent media concerning issues such as organization structures.