The struggle of the political opposition in Hong Kong for democratic reforms has lasted several decades. But in the 2010’s Hong Kong youth took on an increasingly active role as both organisers of and participants in protest action. In 2019, the city saw peaceful mass demonstrations, a record voter turnout, and violent protests. University and high-school students constituted more than one quarter of all participants in demonstrations and protest activities. Triggered by a now shelved extradition bill, these events quickly turned into an anti-government movement.
Social media platforms (e.g. LIHKG, Telegram, Facebook) were critical for communication and the coordination of protest action. Further, creative forms of participation, such as performances, street art (e.g. Lennon Walls), translation of news, a parallel opposition economy ('yellow economic circle'), and citizens’ press conferences, emerged. Some of those had been established since the 2014 Umbrella Movement, while other channels such as LIHKG or hkmap.live gained popularity or were established during the 2019 movement.
Causes for an increased willingness to not only participate but actively create new ways of engagement have been studied extensively. Young people in Hong Kong have been found to be particularly hopeless about the future of their city and showed high levels of dissatisfaction with the political system, particularly with electoral politics. Moreover, highly educated residents of the city appear to be more dissatisfied with the political situation in Hong Kong, and research found that young adults and especially those with some form of tertiary education were particularly active in the anti-extradition bill social movement. Therefore, the current analysis aims to examine (1) what kinds of protest activities students from two leading universities in Hong Kong pursued in support of the movement, (2) whether students’ participation is best differentiated by the nature of the participation or by mode (e.g., is there a clear distinction between online and offline activities), and (3) how their collective and political self-efficacy, as well as their satisfaction with the political and socio-economic situation in Hong Kong, may have influenced students’ modes of participation in the social movement.
To address the research questions we use panel data from students who participated in one survey shortly before the 2019 social movement and in another survey a year later. Descriptive analyses show that students were highly active in both online and offline activities to support the social movement. Exploratory factor analysis is used to identify the forms of social movement participation, two factors emerge that do not separate offline and online activities from each other.
Structural equation modeling disentangles the role of efficacy and dissatisfaction and their interactions, controlling for other variables. The results show differential associations of efficacy and dissatisfaction and indicate that political dissatisfaction is a particularly strong correlate of protest actions. We discuss these results with respect to the conceptualization of social movement participation, the link between offline and online participation, as well as theories of protest action.
