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Scholars across various disciplines have discussed the role of ICTs and social media in contentious politics and social movements. Other studies have also highlighted the duality of data particularly in the context of contentious politics: data is simultaneously an object of political struggle and a weapon in repertoires of political struggle. Taking the protesters' collective and networked program of sousveillance during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB Movement as an example, this article examines protesters' and pro-establishment's engagement with data, the datafication of police as proxies of the state, and attitudes towards various forms of 'veillance'. The doxing at the heart of this case study provides an example in which data as constituents of movement repertoire and data as a contentious issue in its own right are conflated. This article bridges the surveillance and social movement literature by examining data practice and doxing during the protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, Hong Kong activists mobilized against the proposed Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) and relied on a mobile chat-app's polling feature to make collective decisions. To understand the chat-app's role in the movement's 'backstage' dynamics — i.e., building coalitions, making decisions, and coordinating action away from public view — I analyzed a series of Telegram polls during the Anti-ELAB movement's airport sit-in/takeover. To generate insights into social movement studies, I combined aspects of a vibrant stream of research known as Communication as Constitutive of Organizing (CCO) with a nuanced use of the affordances concept. To identify the backstage dynamics of the movement, I applied criteria from the organizationality concept to assess the extent to which the movement communicatively exhibited organizational characteristics. Therefore, I addressed how chat-app polling facilitated collective decision-making and cultivated the movement's social address and collective identity. Recognizing chat-app polling as pivotal in transforming voiced concerns to legitimized authority, I identified three authorship affordances that fostered authority practices: anonymity, hyper-temporality, and affectivity. This study makes three contributions: (1) it extends the understanding of backstage organizational dynamics of social movements by adding two additional criteria of collective decision-making and collective actorhood to the extant criteria of collective identity, (2) it refines the affordances concept to explore how chat-apps influence data-related practices in contentious politics, and (3) it provides a novel method of analysis to isolate and investigate the processual dynamics of authority practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of social movements have taken the form of connective action achieved through datafication structures in the absence of central coordinating social movement organizations. Social movement demobilization in digitally-mediated connective action remains a relatively understudied area. Drawing together social movement studies and communication studies, we introduce the theoretical framework of 'implicated networks of demobilization' (INsD) to explore the dynamics and implications of datafication for social movement demobilization. Based on examples from the Anti-Extradition Bill movement in Hong Kong and the 2020 George Floyd protests in the United States, we theorize that the connective action embedded in the datafication structure confronts three demobilizational dynamics: implicated data, materiality, and epistemic dynamics. These dynamics imply that connective action mobilization in datafied societies faces constraints pertaining to state-level network oppression, potential threats imposed by the material datafication structure, and the spread of digital knowledge of self-protection. The INsD framework contributes to understanding the interactive data-mediated dynamics between the state and activists in connective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims made during mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and Thailand in 2020 became increasingly transgressive. Localist demands and calls for the reform of the monarchy, respectively, violated conventional political norms in these two hybrid regimes. This paper examines the dynamics of opposition discursive radicalization during ongoing autocratization. Observational data and protest event analysis are employed to assess the scaling up of claims-making and its relationship to protest size and group solidarity. The paper argues that radicalization can best be understood relationally, between a hybrid regime, on the one hand, and moderates and radicals in the opposition, on the other. It identifies the following three points of convergence that lead to similar protest trajectories in both cases: the marginalization of moderates along with their gatekeeping role of transgressive discourses; the creation of digitally enabled protest networks that facilitated mass mobilization and claims diffusion; and the intensification of protest policing that provoked a departure from reformist to revolutionary claims. The argument offered here shows similarities to but also nuanced differences from the repression literature and casts doubt on the assumptions about the demobilizing impact of autocratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the anti-extradition bill movement in Hong Kong, this paper employs the concepts of doing and undoing gender to investigate the barriers that female frontline protesters encountered and the strategies they adopted. It shows that stereotypes linking high-risk activism and physical prowess with masculinity, the association of the frontline with high risks of arrest and injuries, and physical confrontation with the police meant that the frontline was marked discursively as a male domain. However, the leaderless characteristic of the movement facilitated women crossing this discursively marked gender boundary. Once on the frontline, women took different paths. Some began to do gender by taking on tasks that were considered less risky and more compatible with femininity because of the gendered interactions amongst protesters. On the other hand, women with experience, and access to social support and mentorship gained the confidence they needed to take on tasks that were seen as 'masculine', and thus undoing the gender stereotype that women lacked the capacity for frontline protest. The findings illustrate the continuous challenge women face as they are held accountable for their gender in social movements. At the same time, they also suggest that women's doing of gender in social movements is not inevitable, but contingent on social contexts and interactions. Certain factors such as the leaderless characteristic of a movement and peer support and mentorship can facilitate gender boundary crossing and neutralize gendered interactions. These, in turn, allow gender to be undone in social movements and promote women's participation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive participation of secondary school students was one of the features that characterized Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. Lacking the power and resources enjoyed by adults, how do these teenagers organize protest actions? While recent scholarship focuses on how recent youth activism is facilitated by the prevalent use of social media, this article argues that digitally-based, informal social movement groups formed by student activists played a crucial role in unleashing teenage youth's social capital. By activating their schools' alumni networks, school reputation and joint-school ties, these digitally-based groups initiated a wide array of collective actions that mobilized scores of teenagers. However, despite forming a decentralized structure, these groups were unequal in terms of their mobilization power. Reputable schools with strong alumni networks and joint-school linkages are more capable of shaping movement narratives and mobilizing territory-wide protest actions. In contrast, schools with weaker social capital are more likely to organize actions with neighbouring schools within local districts and rely on external help. Our findings contribute to social movement studies by demonstrating how teenage youth engage in protests and how informal, Internet-initiated protest organizations play a crucial role in shaping movement dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary networked social movements are often described as leaderless. However, social influence is inevitably unevenly distributed across participants, so informal and diffused leaders do exist. This study contends that analysis of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements should examine whether such leadership is stable and what factors might explain who can take on a leadership role. Starting from these premises, this study investigates discussions of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong on the online forum LIHKG. Analyzing millions of movement-related and non-movement-related comments revealed that influence was highly unevenly distributed and that opinion leadership was more unstable in movement-related discussions. Opinion leadership was related to personal characteristics and communication activities, but sometimes in ways that were specific to movement-related discussions. Moreover, opinion leadership tended to stabilize over time. The findings provide insights into the characteristics of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the roles of professional networks in mass protests. The extensive participation of professionals in the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong, using their professional expertise, specialized networks and institutional positions, constituted a novel form of collective action. Based on framing analysis of sectoral petitions and interviews with participating professionals, this paper shows that state–corporatist arrangements and social movement abeyance structures laid the foundation for sectoral mobilization in the anti-extradition movement. It reveals the conditions under which professional activism can move beyond individual practices and overcome organizational barriers to generating resources to sustain a mass movement. Perceived threats to the professional ethos triggered cross-sectoral participation. Sectoral mobilization modes and levels were contingent on an array of institutional constraints, informal networks and conjunctural events that made for widespread and legitimate professional involvement in a networked movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One distinctive feature of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong is the 'international front' on which both Hong-Kong-based activists and members of diaspora communities engaged in public diplomacy and foreign government lobbying. While the emergence of the international front can partly be explained by perceived political opportunities and protesters' identity change, this article focuses on the evolution of mobilizing structures. Of particular interest is how the mobilizing structures were activated, expanded, and transformed in a protest campaign marked by certain core features of networked social movements. Based on in-depth interviews with twenty activists, the analysis illustrates the co-presence of and complementarity between digitally enabled, citizen self-initiated actions and organization-based mobilization. The analysis also shows how tactical shifts, negotiation of differences among activists, and state response drove the transformation of activist network. General theoretical implications on understanding of diaspora mobilization and networked social movements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement studies often focus on how the general public is mobilized to join collective contentious actions rather than on state-movement relations. Yet, institutional actors who occupy positions within the administration can employ institutional means to support a social movement. We examine how social-psychological factors and communication patterns influence institutional actors' participation, based on a survey of civil servants during the anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in Hong Kong (N = 277). The results show that both the perceived damage to reputation and collective efficacy relate positively to participation intent. Through structural equation modeling, we elaborate how news consumption on different media platforms and interpersonal discussions influence civil servants' political participation indirectly through affecting the perception of their reputation and collective efficacy. These findings suggest institutional actors are motivated to act when a social movement threatens institutional legitimacy and engenders collective efficacy through mass/interpersonal communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have called for a synergy between studies of deliberative democracy and social movements for their mutual enhancement. The existing literature generally applies the principle of deliberation to evaluate social movements, but few studies have examined the corresponding practice of deliberative democracy within a movement. The Occupy Central (OCLP) campaign in Hong Kong is a rare case in which the organizers incorporated Deliberation Days into a social movement; however, participant self-selection turned it into an instance of 'enclave deliberation'. This paper studies the impact of enclave deliberation on social movements based on the case of the OCLP campaign and argues that enclave deliberation can be a powerful tool for mobilization, particularly for gaining public support and for recruiting core participants. However, the coherence and support of the movement can decline when enclave deliberation is used to make decisions for the general public, because enclave deliberation incorporates only a small spectrum of like-minded participants who might not seriously engage with opposing views. The findings of this study imply that enclave deliberation could facilitate mobilization, but it has its inherent limitations for decision-making in a movement. Given the selective nature of social movements, deliberation within social movements is likely to be enclave deliberation in most cases. This study thus has significant implications for the practice of deliberation in social movements in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]