Spiral of Talk: expression of opinions about 2019 Hong Kong protests on Facebook.

The spiral of silence is a traditional communication theory that bridges the gap between micro and macro aspects of public opinion. In the era of Web 2.0, under the strong influence of globalization, we have reason to rethink the theory in the online environment. Following the theory of the spiral of silence, people do not express themselves when they think the climate of opinion is contrary to theirs, with silence increasing over time. Therefore, we ask: Is it possible to identify the phenomena of the spiral of silence in the online environment in the context of Hong Kong's anti-amendment law? Has the public opinion environment affected people's willingness to express themselves about the issue? To address these questions, we chose the Facebook page of the South China Morning Post, the most influential media in Hong Kong, as our object of analysis. Within that, we manually analyzed 76 posts on the South China Morning Post's Facebook website and 2,000 public comments. The results showed that minority opinion holders retained their voices initially but began to express their positions over time, breaking the spiral of silence. Based on the analysis of the context of the movement against the Extradition Law in Hong Kong, we aim to enrich empirical research on Eastern countries and suggest new avenues of research on political participation in social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]