This study describes a media-participated process of institutional change. By examining media ’s representation of the Consumer Rights Movement in contemporary China, it argues that media do not limit themselves to reporting the everyday work of the official movement organization, but follow the media logic and turn their attention to people’s everyday practices. By telling "stories of suffering" and "stories of struggling for rights", and by providing a public stage for people’s everyday practices, media construct an appealing discourse concerning consumer rights, which becomes the framework for people to interpret their daily issues. On the public space cultivated on media , some problems become public issues and a "discursive movement" challenging certain institution or policy comes into being, which facilitates certain institutional adjustments. In this process, media play the role of “story narrator”, “public stage” and “agenda-builder”, and the latter works on the basis of the first two. This combination of media’s roles makes it possible for the "society", substantively and symbolically, to express to the “state”; in response, the state changes certain institution or policies. This research provides us a new perspective on how the society and the state interact by way of public expression in contemporary China, under the condition of changing state-society relationship without a civil society yet.