scholarly journals Metalinguistic tactics in the Hong Kong protest movement

Author(s):  
Rodney H. Jones ◽  
Dennis Chau

Abstract This paper explores the metalinguistic tactics used by Hong Kong protesters in 2014 and 2019 and how they reflected and exploited a range of dominant ideologies about language in the city. These tactics are considered both in terms of their rhetorical utility in the “message war” between protesters and authorities, and their significance in the broader sociolinguistic context of Hong Kong. The analysis reveals how such tactics entailed both opportunities and risks, allowing protesters to create shareable discursive artifacts that spread quickly over social media and to promote in-group solidarity and distrust of their political opponents, but also limiting their ability to broaden the appeal of their messages to certain segments of the population and implicating them in upholding language ideologies that promote exclusion and marginalization.

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anonymous

Social media played a toxic role in the Hong Kong protests of 2019, overwhelming diverse voices and taxing mainstream media to a degree that it relinquished traditional principles of discovery and balance. As in other places where social media has mixed with politics, it helped polarize the Hong Kong public and dominated international views of the protests. Among other consequences, Hong Kong became a pawn in geopolitical rivalry between China and the United States, in part because both China and the United States accepted the view that Hong Kong was in the throes of full-fledged rebellion. Left behind were voices in the middle ground, the business community, and others who were mostly silent witnesses as Hong Kong devolved into widely traded scenes of violent protest.


Significance It follows the framework unveiled in August 2014 by the National People's Congress in Beijing -- the event that sparked mass protests that brought parts of the city centre to a standstill for nearly three months. The draft legislation makes no concessions to the demands of the protest movement or opposition lawmakers. Impacts The pan-democrats could try to regain the initiative by stalling unrelated legislation, but this could cost them public support. The resentments that fed the protests will fester, and activists will seek new targets and tactics of mobilisation. If the law passes, the democratic forces it unleashes may ultimately prove harder to contain than Beijing expects.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Zhuoyi Wen ◽  
Ka Ho Mok ◽  
Padmore Adusei Amoah

Abstract The population aged 65 years and above in Hong Kong is projected to rise from 15 per cent in 2014 to 38.4 per cent in 2069. Therefore, the quest for creating age-friendly conditions and the promotion of active ageing has become a priority for the Hong Kong Government and stakeholders in the city. Using a cross-national comparative framework for productive engagement in later life, this article examines the predictors of productive engagement (perceived voluntary engagement) in two districts (the Islands and Tsuen Wan) of Hong Kong – a typical productivist welfare regime in Asia. Data were collected through a social survey to ascertain the perception of an age-friendly city and active ageing in 2016 and 2018 from 1,638 persons aged 60 years and older. The results indicate some differences in the perception of the key determinants in both districts, but the factors associated with productive engagement were consistent, namely social atmosphere, social provisions and the built environment. The findings are discussed within the broader discourse on social gerontology, age-friendly cities and productivist welfare regimes.


Author(s):  
Roberto Cancio

Military sexual violence (MSV) is a prevalent issue that uniquely affects mission readiness. Although research on MSV and social media is growing, examinations of possible interventions like those employing social media in this population are scant. Given the growing interest in targeting MSV, the present systematic review was conducted. The PRISMA framework was used to conduct a systematic review of MSV and social media ( N = 71). Queries were limited to articles published between 2010 and 2020. SAGE Journals, PubMed, and JSTOR were utilized. Terms and potential combinations were entered into the databases in varying Boolean combinations. Additional recorders were identified for inclusion via the reference sections of relevant records. After removing duplicates from the query results, we selected records of suspected relevance by title and screened abstracts. Finally, articles with relevant abstracts were reviewed thoroughly to determine whether they met inclusion criteria for the review. The employments of military leaders in a social media intervention puts into practice the military’s central values and development of its leadership core. This intervention promotes group solidarity while maximizing conversations around meaningful messages. Findings in this review suggest military leaders could feasibly employ a cost-effective global intervention using social media, as a tool to help actively address MSV.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 4043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús López Baeza ◽  
Jens Bley ◽  
Kay Hartkopf ◽  
Martin Niggemann ◽  
James Arias ◽  
...  

The research presented in this paper describes an evaluation of the impact of spatial interventions in public spaces, measured by social media data. This contribution aims at observing the way a spatial intervention in an urban location can affect what people talk about on social media. The test site for our research is Domplatz in the center of Hamburg, Germany. In recent years, several actions have taken place there, intending to attract social activity and spotlight the square as a landmark of cultural discourse in the city of Hamburg. To evaluate the impact of this strategy, textual data from the social networks Twitter and Instagram (i.e., tweets and image captions) are collected and analyzed using Natural Language Processing intelligence. These analyses identify and track the cultural topic or “people talking about culture” in the city of Hamburg. We observe the evolution of the cultural topic, and its potential correspondence in levels of activity, with certain intervention actions carried out in Domplatz. Two analytic methods of topic clustering and tracking are tested. The results show a successful topic identification and tracking with both methods, the second one being more accurate. This means that it is possible to isolate and observe the evolution of the city’s cultural discourse using NLP. However, it is shown that the effects of spatial interventions in our small test square have a limited local scale, rather than a city-wide relevance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110197
Author(s):  
Chesca Ka Po Wong ◽  
Runping Zhu ◽  
Richard Krever ◽  
Alfred Siu Choi

While the impact of fake news on viewers, particularly marginalized media users, has been a cause of growing concern, there has been little attention paid to the phenomenon of deliberately “manipulated” news published on social media by mainstream news publishers. Using qualitative content analysis and quantitative survey research, this study showed that consciously biased animated news videos released in the midst of the Umbrella Movement protests in Hong Kong impacted on both the attitudes of students and their participation in the protests. The findings raise concerns over potential use of the format by media owners to promote their preferred ideologies.


1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Fitzgerald ◽  
Terry Threadgold

When The Age renamed the corner of Russell and Bourke streets the ‘Golden Elbow’ it brought the city into close proximity with an altogether different city. Neither Chang Mai, Hong Kong nor Melbourne, the Golden Elbow was defined by what it could be. Neither one thing (Melbourne) nor another (somewhere else), the Golden Elbow is a space of the city-becoming-other. Through narrative work and news media maps of no-go zones, machines mobilise fear and thus value, from the desire flowing through this abject zone. Capitalism sucks value from these encounters through the production of fear as affect. The city-becoming-other is both enormously productive, and destructive of bodies caught up in the mix. This article explores the flow of desire and the abject of a city becoming other through a street drug marketplace.  The encounter with the abject brings use closer to the beauty and fear of ontological mixity.


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