Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T11:14:20.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Would violent tactics cost a democratic movement its international support? A critical examination of Hong Kong's anti-ELAB movement using sentiment analysis and topic modelling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2022

Elizabeth Lui Open the ORCID record for Elizabeth Lui [Opens in a new window]
Elizabeth Lui*
Affiliation:
Centre for Public Affairs and Law, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper aims to address an important yet under-studied issue – how does violence from the side of the protestors affect overseas support for a democratic movement? The importance of this question is twofold. First, while violence and radicalization are not exactly unfamiliar territories for scholars of contentious politics, they do not receive as much attention when their effects spill beyond the domestic arenas. Second, this study seeks to examine international solidarity with democratic movements at the civil society level, which differs substantially from the conventional elite-centric approach when it comes to the intersection between democratization and international relations. Against this backdrop, this paper considers the relationship between violent tactics employed by the protestors during the anti-extradition movement and the sentiment expressed by people elsewhere towards the protests. To this end, a total of 9,659,770 tweets were extracted using Twitter Application Programming Interface during the period of 1 June 2019–31 January 2020. Leveraging computational methods such as topic modelling and sentiment analysis, findings in this paper demonstrate that a majority of foreign Twitter users were supportive of the protestors while held relatively negative sentiments against the government as well as the police. In addition, this study reveals that, broadly speaking, violence might cost a democratic movement by its international support, but could also garner more attention at times. Despite its restricted scope, this paper hopefully will shed some useful light on the dynamics underlying international solidarity for a democratic movement abroad as well as the complex mechanisms of interactions between people who protest at home and those who observe from overseas.

Keywords

Contentious politicsdemocratizationsentiment analysistopic modellingTwitter
Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bakliwal, A, Foster, J, van der Puil, J, OBrien, RD, Tounsi, L and Hughes, M (2013) Sentiment Analysis of Political Tweets: Towards an Accurate Classifier.Google Scholar
Bruns, A and Highfield, T (2013) Political networks on Twitter. Information, Communication & Society 16(5), 667–691. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2013.782328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruns, A, Highfield, T and Burgess, J (2013) The Arab spring and social Media audiences: English and Arabic Twitter users and their networks. American Behavioral Scientist 57, 871–898.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cai, Y (2019) 8. Protesters and tactical escalation. In Ngok, M and Edmund, WC (eds), The Umbrella Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 209–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chenoweth, E and Cunningham, KG (2013) Understanding nonviolent resistance: an introduction. Journal of Peace Research 50(3), 271–276. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343313480381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, R and Snow, DA (2012) Radicalism within the context of social movements: processes and types. Journal of Strategic Security 4(4), 115–130.Google Scholar
Disclosing networks of state-linked information operations we've removed (2020) 12 June 2020, Available at https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/information-operations-june-2020.Google Scholar
Elsbach, K and Sutton, R (1992) Acquiring organizational legitimacy through illegitimate actions: a marriage of institutional and impression management theories. Academy of Management Journal 35, 699–738.Google Scholar
Erica, C (2013) Terrorism and democracy. Annual Review of Political Science 16, 355–378.Google Scholar
Extradition Law Amendment in Hong Kong – Threat to Personal Safety and Freedom (2019) 15 May 2019, Available at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/extradition-law-amendment-hong-kong-threat-personal-safety-and-freedom.Google Scholar
Fingerhut, D (2011) Straight allies: what predicts heterosexuals' alliance with the LGBT community?. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 41, 2230–2248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Five Eyes Countries Issue Joint Statement on Hong Kong (2019) The Diplomat, 19 November 2019, Available at https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/five-eyes-countries-issue-joint-statement-on-hong-kong/.Google Scholar
Gamson, WA (1990) The Strategy of Social Protest. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub.Google Scholar
Giugni, M (1998) Was it worth the effort? The outcomes and consequences of social movements. Annual Review of Sociology 24, 371–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herbert, HH (1984) Black radicalization and the funding of civil rights: 1957–1970. Social Problems 32, 31–43.Google Scholar
Hong Kong activists Denise Ho and Joshua Wong testify at US congressional hearing on protests (2019) Hong Kong Free Press, 17 September 2019, Available at https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/09/17/live-hong-kong-activists-denise-ho-joshua-wong-testify-us-congressional-hearing-protests/.Google Scholar
Hong Kong Protesters Are Targeting Starbucks (2019) Apple Could Be Next, New York Times, 15 October 2019, Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/business/hong-kong-starbucks-vandalism.html.Google Scholar
Hong Kong Protesters Squeeze Access to the Airport (2019) New York Times, 1 September 2019, Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/world/asia/hong-kong-protests-arrests-airport.html.Google Scholar
Hong Kong protests: What are the ‘five demands’? What do protesters want? (2019) South China Morning Post, 20 August 2019, Available at https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/news/hong-kong/article/3065950/hong-kong-protests-what-are-five-demands-what-do.Google Scholar
Information operations directed at Hong Kong (2019) Twitter Safety, 19 August 2019, Available at https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/information_operations_directed_at_Hong_Kong.html.Google Scholar
Jenkins, J and Perrow, C (1977) Insurgency of the powerless: farm worker movements (1946–1972). American Sociological Review 42, 249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kudelia, S (2018) When numbers are not enough: the strategic use of violence in Ukraine's 2014 revolution. Comparative Politics 50, 501–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsky, M (1968) Protest as a political resource. American Political Science Review 62, 1144–1158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mcfaul, M (2007) Ukraine imports democracy: external influences on the orange revolution. International Security 32, 45–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morstatter, F, Pfeffer, J, Liu, H and Carley, KM (2013) Is the sample good enough? Comparing data from twitter's streaming API with Twitter's firehose. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, ICWSM 2013 (pp. 400–408). AAAI press.Google Scholar
Muñoz, J and Anduiza, E (2019) ‘If a fight starts, watch the crowd’: the effect of violence on popular support for social movements. Journal of Peace Research 56, 485–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muñoz, P, Kimmitt, J, Kibler, E and Farny, S (2019) Living on the slopes: entrepreneurial preparedness in a context under continuous threat. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development 31(5–6), 413–434. doi: 10.1080/08985626.2018.1541591.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nieburg, HL (1962) The threat of violence and social change. American Political Science Review 56, 865–873.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, K and Li, L (2006) Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Over a million attend Hong Kong demo against controversial extradition law, organisers say (2019) Hong Kong Free Press, 9 June 2019, Available at https://hongkongfp.com/2019/06/09/just-no-china-extradition-tens-thousands-hong-kong-protest-controversial-new-law/.Google Scholar
Petchler, R and González-Bailón, S (2015) 24. Automated content analysis of online political communication. In Coleman, S and Freelon, D (eds), Handbook of Digital Politics. London: Edward Elgar, pp. 433–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Protesters in need of carrots after sticks (2019) South China Morning Post, 19 August 2019, Available at https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3023417/protesters-need-carrots-after-sticks.Google Scholar
Snyder, D (1978) Collective violence: a research agenda and some strategic considerations. Journal of Conflict Resolution 22, 499–534. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/002200277802200309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘Stand with Hong Kong’: G20 appeal over extradition law crisis appears in over 10 int'l newspapers (2019) South China Morning Post, 28 June 2019, Available at https://hongkongfp.com/2019/06/28/stand-hong-kong-g20-appeal-extradition-law-crisis-appears-10-intl-newspapers/.Google Scholar
Tarrow, S (1988) National politics and collective action: recent theory and research in Western Europe and the United States. Annual Review of Sociology 14, 421–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, S (1998). Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (2nd ed., Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Zomeren, M, Leach, CW and Spears, R (2012) Protestors as ‘passionate economists’: a dynamic dual pathway model of approach coping with collective disadvantage. Personality and Social Psychology Review 16, 180–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, D and Piazza, A (2016) The use of disruptive tactics in protest as a trade-off: the role of social movement claims. Social Forces 94, 1675–1710. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sov124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Lui Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OQBNSK
Link