scholarly journals Analyzing protest mobilization on Telegram: The case of 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill movement in Hong Kong

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. e0256675
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Urman ◽  
Justin Chun-ting Ho ◽  
Stefan Katz

Online messaging app Telegram has increased in popularity in recent years surpassing Twitter and Snapchat by the number of active monthly users in late 2020. The messenger has also been crucial to protest movements in several countries in 2019-2020, including Belarus, Russia and Hong Kong. Yet, to date only few studies examined online activities on Telegram and none have analyzed the platform with regard to the protest mobilization. In the present study, we address the existing gap by examining Telegram-based activities related to the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. With this paper we aim to provide an example of methodological tools that can be used to study protest mobilization and coordination on Telegram. We also contribute to the research on computational text analysis in Cantonese—one of the low-resource Asian languages,—as well as to the scholarship on Hong Kong protests and research on social media-based protest mobilization in general. For that, we rely on the data collected through Telegram’s API and a combination of network analysis and computational text analysis. We find that the Telegram-based network was cohesive ensuring efficient spread of protest-related information. Content spread through Telegram predominantly concerned discussions of future actions and protest-related on-site information (i.e., police presence in certain areas). We find that the Telegram network was dominated by different actors each month of the observation suggesting the absence of one single leader. Further, traditional protest leaders—those prominent during the 2014 Umbrella Movement,—such as media and civic organisations were less prominent in the network than local communities. Finally, we observe a cooldown in the level of Telegram activity after the enactment of the harsh National Security Law in July 2020. Further investigation is necessary to assess the persistence of this effect in a long-term perspective.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Urman ◽  
Justin Chun-ting Ho ◽  
Stefan Katz

We examine Telegram-based activities related to the 2019 protests in Hong Kong thus presenting the first study of a large Telegram-aided protest movement. We contribute to both - scholarship on Hong Kongese protests and research on social media-based protest mobilization. For that, we rely on the data collected through Telegram’s API and a combination of network analysis and computational text analysis. We find that the Telegram-based network was cohesive ensuring the efficient spread of protest-related information. Content spread through Telegram predominantly concerned discussions of future actions and protest-related on-site information (i.e., police presence in certain areas). We find that the Telegram network was dominated by different actors each month of the observation suggesting the absence of one single leader. Further, traditional protest leaders - those prominent during the 2014 Umbrella Movement, - such as media and civic organisations were less prominent in the network than local communities. Finally, we observe a cooldown in the level of Telegram activity after the enactment of the harsh National Security Law in July 2020. Further investigation is necessary to assess the persistence of this effect in a long-term perspective.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6673 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiattipoom Kiatkawsin ◽  
Ian Sutherland ◽  
Jin-Young Kim

Airbnb has emerged as a platform where unique accommodation options can be found. Due to the uniqueness of each accommodation unit and host combination, each listing offers a one-of-a-kind experience. As consumers increasingly rely on text reviews of other customers, managers are also increasingly gaining insight from customer reviews. Thus, this present study aimed to extract those insights from reviews using latent Dirichlet allocation, an unsupervised type of topic modeling that extracts latent discussion topics from text data. Findings of Hong Kong’s 185,695 and Singapore’s 93,571 Airbnb reviews, two long-term rival destinations, were compared. Hong Kong produced 12 total topics that can be categorized into four distinct groups whereas Singapore’s optimal number of topics was only five. Topics produced from both destinations covered the same range of attributes, but Hong Kong’s 12 topics provide a greater degree of precision to formulate managerial recommendations. While many topics are similar to established hotel attributes, topics related to the host and listing management are unique to the Airbnb experience. The findings also revealed keywords used when evaluating the experience that provide more insight beyond typical numeric ratings.


Author(s):  
Francis L.F. Lee ◽  
Joseph M. Chan

Digital and social media are increasingly integrated into dynamics of protest movements. They strengthen the mobilization power of movements, extend movement networks, facilitate new modes of protest participation, and lead to the emergence of new protest formations. Meanwhile, conventional media remain an important arena where the contest for public support between protesters and their targets play out. This book examines the role of the media—understood as an integrated system composed of both conventional media institutions and digital media platforms—in the formation and dynamics of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014. It grounds the analysis into the broad background of the rise of protest politics in Hong Kong since the early 2000s. More important, this book connects the case of the Umbrella Movement to recent theorizations of new social movement formations. It treats the Umbrella Movement as a case where connective action intervenes into a collective action campaign, leading to an extended occupation mixing old and new protest logics. The analysis shows how the media had not only empowered the protest movements in certain ways, but also introduced forces not conducive to the sustainability and efficacy of the movement. Conventional and digital media could also be used by the state to undermine protests. Through a combination of protester surveys, population surveys, analyses of news contents, and social media activities, this book reconstructs a rich and nuanced account of the Umbrella Movement, which helps shed light on numerous issues about the media-movement nexus in the digital era.


2014 ◽  
pp. 13-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Glazyev

This article examines fundamental questions of monetary policy in the context of challenges to the national security of Russia in connection with the imposition of economic sanctions by the US and the EU. It is proved that the policy of the Russian monetary authorities, particularly the Central Bank, artificially limiting the money supply in the domestic market and pandering to the export of capital, compounds the effects of economic sanctions and plunges the economy into depression. The article presents practical advice on the transition from external to domestic sources of long-term credit with the simultaneous adoption of measures to prevent capital flight.


Author(s):  
Oksana Gaiduchok ◽  
◽  
Oleksiy Stupnytskyi ◽  

In modern times, it is believed that by reducing the risk of military intervention, military security has lost its relevance, and economic security has become a priority of national interests. The principle of economic security is as follows: national interests are supported through an economic system that supports free exchange and ensures the upward mobility of the nation. The analysis of economic security is based on the concept of national interests. It is well known that the problem of national security and its components cannot be considered only from the standpoint of current interests; it is closely related to the possibilities of their implementation over a significant, long-term period. Each stage of realization of national interests of the country is characterized by its assessment of its geopolitical, geostrategic and geoeconomic conditions, security threats and the main carriers of these threats, the mechanism of realization of national interests (each of the stages has its own assessment of the main definitions and categories of security, the main vectors of geoeconomic policy). Economic security is the foundation and material basis of national security. A state is in a state of security if it protects its own national interests and is able to defend them through political, economic, socio-psychological, military and other actions. There is a close connection between economic security and the system of national and state interests, and it is through this category that the problems of economic potential and economic power of the state, geopolitical and geoeconomic positions of the country in the modern world are intertwined. At a time when regional forces are trying to expand markets, provide access to finance and the latest technology, economic security has become a necessary component of the ability of regional forces to expand their influence. The article is devoted to the study of economic security of Ukraine and its components using the model of quantitative assessment of economic security of Ukraine. Using the Fishburne method, a model is built that allows to obtain an integrated assessment of the level of economic security based on the synthesis of nine partial indicators.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chinweike Eseonu ◽  
Martin A Cortes

There is a culture of disengagement from social consideration in engineering disciplines. This means that first year engineering students, who arrive planning to change the world through engineering, lose this passion as they progress through the engineering curriculum. The community driven technology innovation and investment program described in this paper is an attempt to reverse this trend by fusing community engagement with the normal engineering design process. This approach differs from existing project or trip based approaches – outreach – because the focus is on local communities with which the university team forms a long-term partnership through weekly in-person meetings and community driven problem statements – engagement.


Author(s):  
Donald DeVito ◽  
Gertrude Bien-Aime ◽  
Hannah Ehrli ◽  
Jamie Schumacher

Haiti has experienced a series of catastrophic natural disasters in recent decades, resulting in significant loss of life and long-term damage to infrastructure. One critical outcome of these disasters is that there are approximately 400,000 orphans in the small population of just over 10 million. Throughout Haiti, children with disabilities are often considered cursed, and thus are rejected by the community in which they live. Haitian children with disabilities need creative and educational activities that will help them grow, develop, enjoy their lives, and become accepted members of the community. This chapter on the Haitian Center for Inclusive Education presents a case study of social media engagement and music learning, with an emphasis on social justice that has contributed to sustainable efforts.


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