Consensus behind disputes: a critical discourse analysis of the media coverage of the right-of-abode issue in postcolonial Hong Kong

This article examines the reportage by four newspapers on the right-of-abode issue in postcolonial Hong Kong, in an attempt to analyze how the same new events might be framed by different ideologies, resulting in different coverage. The coverage is first approached through the analysis of lexical choices, followed by propositional analysis. A discussion section is intended to interpret those differences, in terms of the selectiveness of the newspapers, in light of Simpson’s definition of ideology. The conclusions drawn from the previous analyses are finally tested by corpus analysis, which lends further support to the preceding text analysis. This article intends to emphasize that, behind the differences in coverage, there is consensus, that is, news coverage is closely in line with its underlying ideological positions, which is instantiated politically, culturally and institutionally.