To speak or not to speak: Predicting college students’ outspokenness in the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong

This study applied the spiral of silence theory to examine college students’ willingness to speak up about the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, both in the offline and online scenarios. The results largely confirmed the spiral of silence effect in the offline scenario, but not in the online condition. Moreover, the finding suggests that, instead of considering the opinion climate from the general public as a whole, the perceived opinion congruency with the peer group positively affected the students’ outspokenness in the real world. Other well-established influencing factors, such as fear of isolation and the awareness of consequence, were confirmed offline as well. Furthermore, alternative media exposure positively predicted one’s willingness to speak up in both the online and offline scenario. The applicability of the spiral of silence hypothesis in the cyberspace was discussed.