Disagreement resolution on digital communication platform in a self-directed political consumerism campaign

ABSTRACT

Digital media have facilitated the growth of citizen self-initiated and self-directed protest campaigns that often lack an authoritative central organizer. One challenge facing such protest campaigns is how internal disagreements about key issues can be resolved or contained. To what extent can movement participants handle disagreements constructively through digital communication? This article addresses this question through a case study of online discussions surrounding the political consumerism campaign during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong. Qualitative content analysis illustrates the range of disagreements that could arise in a self-directed political consumerism campaign and uncovers the various types of engaging and disengaging communications that people practiced. Quantitative content analysis shows that disengaging communications were more common, yet people were more responsive to engaging communications. The latter was more obvious as the campaign proceeded. Implications of the findings on the capability of decentralized protests to resolve internal differences are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Political consumerism
• networked social movement
• disagreement resolution
• online discussions
• engaging vs. disengaging communications
• Hong Kong

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The coding scheme is available as supplemental online material.

2 The relatively low alpha value is largely a result of the extreme distribution of these variables (and hence very high levels of agreement by chance).

3 The posts were translated into English by the authors. The figure refers to the size of the protest march on June 16, 2019.

4 Throughout the Anti-ELAB Movement, Lennon Walls were set up across the city for movement supporters to post messages.

5 The term refers to online users paid to post messages to support the government.

6 ‘Hong Kong pig,’ in local parlance, refers to citizens who do not care about the society and focus only on private enjoyment.

7 Although engaging and disengagement elements can co-exist in a post, the majority of the posts were engaging only (14.7%), disengaging only (31.6%), or neither (45.8%). Only 7.9% of the posts contained both engaging and disengaging elements. Hence using engaging first post and disengagement first post as the independent variables should be adequate.

8 Additional analyses were conducted by dividing disengaging first post into: (1) conciliatory disengagement (avoidance or agenda-shifting) and (2) antagonistic disengagement (outgroup attribution or sarcasm, ad hominem attack, pessimism). The results largely align with that presented in Table 2. Antagonistic disengagement did not relate to any dependent variables significantly or have any interaction effect with time period. Conciliatory disengagement related positively to number of replies (B = .48, SE = .20, p < .05) and upvotes (B = .96, SE = .30, p < .001), but it did not relate significantly to number of downvotes, nor did it have any interaction effect with time period. On the whole, disengaging first posts were much less effective in generating responses from fellow forum users.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ivy W. Y. Fong

Ivy W. Y. Fong is a Ph.D. student at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests reside in corporate communication and crisis communication, and her most recent research focuses on consumer activism and corresponding corporate responses.

Francis L. F. Lee

Francis L. F. Lee is Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. His most recent publications include Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019 (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) and Media and Protest Logics in the Digital Era (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is an elected Fellow at the International Communication Association.