Overview

Digital and social media are increasingly integrated into the dynamics of protest movements around the world. They strengthen the mobilisation power of movements, extend movement networks, facilitate new modes of protest participation, and give rise to new protest formations. Meanwhile, conventional media remains an important arena where protesters and their targets contest for public support. This book examines the role of the media - understood as an integrated system comprised of both conventional media institutions and digital media platforms - in the formation and dynamics of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. For 79 days in 2014, Hong Kong became the focus of international attention due to a public demonstration for genuine democracy that would become known as the Umbrella Movement. During this time, twenty percent of the local population would join the demonstration, the most large-scale and sustained act of civil disobedience in Hong Kong's history - and the largest public protest campaign in China since the 1989 student movement in Beijing. On the surface, this movement was not unlike other large-scale protest movements that have occurred around the world in recent years. However, it was distinct in how bottom-up processes evolved into a centrally organised, programmatic movement with concrete policy demands. In this book, Francis L. F. Lee and Joseph M. Chan connect the case of the Umbrella Movement to recent theorisations of new social movement formations. Here, Lee and Chan analyse how traditional mass media institutions and digital media combined with on-the-ground networks in such a way as to propel citizen participation and the evolution of the movement as a whole. As such, they argue that the Umbrella Movement is important in the way it sheds light on the rise of digital-media-enabled social movements, the relationship between digital media platforms and legacy media institutions, the power and limitations of such occupation protests and new action logics, and the continual significance of old protest logics of resource mobilisation and collective action frames. 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, providing insight into numerous issues about the media-movement nexus in the digital era.

Full Product Details

9780190856786

Table of Contents

Reviews

A powerful study of social and political mobilization in the digital age through a critical analysis of Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement. A case study with depth and insight, but also offering plenty of critical reflections at the theoretical level. Its relevance goes beyond Hong Kong and Asian studies. Indeed, students of media studies and social movement analysis will find the authors providing them with new insights for analyzing connective actions, the social processes of mobilization, and the framing of protest. --Tai-lok Lui, co-author of Hong Kong: Becoming a Chinese Global City This is a brilliant, compelling, and measured analysis that zooms in and out of the most important popular movement in Hong Kong's history. Weaving vivid and massive data into a theoretically informed narrative, Lee and Chan reveal stunning and colliding dynamics between media and movement in the digital age. This insightful and accessible book deserves to be widely read by social scientists, civil society activists, policymakers, and the general public. --Ching Kwan Lee, author of The Specter of Global China Marshalling rich empirical data collected on-site, Media and Protest Logics in the Digital Era provides the first systematic study of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Its insightful analysis of the tensions between organization and decentralization and between collective and connective action represents the most important and original theoretical interventions in the study of digital media and social movements I have seen in recent years. --Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

A powerful study of social and political mobilization in the digital age through a critical analysis of Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement. A case study with depth and insight, but also offering plenty of critical reflections at the theoretical level. Its relevance goes beyond Hong Kong and Asian studies. Indeed, students of media studies and social movement analysis will find the authors providing them with new insights for analyzing connective actions, the social processes of mobilization, and the framing of protest. --Tai-lok Lui, co-author of Hong Kong: Becoming a Chinese Global City This is a brilliant, compelling, and measured analysis that zooms in and out of the most important popular movement in Hong Kong's history. Weaving vivid and massive data into a theoretically informed narrative, Lee and Chan reveal stunning and colliding dynamics between media and movement in the digital age. This insightful and accessible book deserves to be widely read by social scientists, civil society activists, policymakers, and the general public. --Ching Kwan Lee, author of The Specter of Global China Marshalling rich empirical data collected on-site, Media and Protest Logics in the Digital Era provides the first systematic study of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Its insightful analysis of the tensions between organization and decentralization and between collective and connective action represents the most important and original theoretical interventions in the study of digital media and social movements I have seen in recent years. --Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Author Information

Francis L.F. Lee is Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Talk Radio, the Mainstream Press, and Public Opinion in Hong Kong and co-author of Media, Social Mobilization, and Mass Protests in Post-colonial Hong Kong. He is also associate editor of Mass Communication & Society and the Chinese Journal of Communication.Joseph M. Chan is Emeritus Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has published extensively on political communication, journalism studies, and international communication. Among his works, he is co-author of Media, Social Mobilization, and Mass Protests in Post-colonial Hong Kong. He was elected a Fellow of the International Communication Association in 2014.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available