Will those suffering from environmental damage be the majority of silence? Based on the analysis of survey data of rural residents in four provinces and counties of northwest China in 2014, the study found that after rural residents experienced environmental damage, 65.25% of them chose to conduct different types of environmental protest behaviors and 34.75% of rural residents kept silence. Through applying the binary logistical regression, the results indicate that media contacts play an significant role in environmental protest behaviors while the social network is no long significantly related to environmental protest. That is to say, rural residents with higher intensity of traditional media contacts, greater likelihood of environmental protest and higher degree of new media trust are more likely to conduct environmental protest. Social network did not significantly influence environmental protest, though it has been tested as a significant factor in urban environmental protest. It can be concluded that with the development of media technology and its dissemination, the option of choosing either environmental protests or silence can be contributed to the different types of media contacts and their trustworthiness.