Institutional actors’ participation in social movement: examining the roles of perceived damage to work reputation, collective efficacy, and communication patterns

ABSTRACT

Social movement studies often focus on how the general public is mobilized to join collective contentious actions rather than on state-movement relations. Yet, institutional actors who occupy positions within the administration can employ institutional means to support a social movement. We examine how social-psychological factors and communication patterns influence institutional actors’ participation, based on a survey of civil servants during the anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in Hong Kong (N = 277). The results show that both the perceived damage to reputation and collective efficacy relate positively to participation intent. Through structural equation modeling, we elaborate how news consumption on different media platforms and interpersonal discussions influence civil servants’ political participation indirectly through affecting the perception of their reputation and collective efficacy. These findings suggest institutional actors are motivated to act when a social movement threatens institutional legitimacy and engenders collective efficacy through mass/interpersonal communications.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movement
• institutional activism
• news media
• communication mediation model
• collective efficacy
• civil service

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Professor Francis L. F. Lee for his advice on data collection. We also want to express our heartfelt gratitude to Professor Michael W. Wagner, Coordinating Editor Dr Gemma Edwards, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments which have greatly improved this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Author Links

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Macau K. F. Mak ORCiD ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0819-1107

Macau K. F. Mak Twitter: @makkafaimacau

Hans Tse ORCiD ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0271-611X

Notes

1. The police estimated a turnout of around 13,000. Our on-site survey collected valid responses from 277 civil servants. 47 civil servants declined to participate in our study, while 368 participants we contacted were not civil servants. In other words, 46.8% of the participants we spoke to were civil servants. We thus estimate that civil servants who joined the rally could range from 6,000 to 18,000, based on the two turnout figures estimated by the police and the organizer. There were more than 170,000 civil servants in Hong Kong at the time of the rally.

2. Focusing on the context of Hong Kong, Lee (2006) found that the effect of individual efficacy on protest intention is significant yet weaker than that of collective efficacy. We include individual internal and external efficacy as controls in the analysis together with other participation-related variables (not specific to civil servant identity), such as ideological strength and political interest. Specifically, internal efficacy refers to an individual’s perceived personal capacity to participate in a movement, while external efficacy refers to the belief about the government’s responsiveness to citizens’ demands (Lee, 2006).

3. These studies suggested the Orientation-Stimulus-Reasoning-Orientation-Response (O-S-R-O-R) model and identified structural relationships in which the effect of media use (S) on political participation (second R) is mediated by discussions (first R) and psychological variables, like political efficacy (second O); demographics and other participation-related variables are considered as pre-existing orientations (first O) and serve as controls.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Macau K. F. Mak

Macau K. F. Mak is a Ph.D. student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include political communication, new media, media effects, social movements, and journalism studies.

Hans Tse

Hans Tse is a M.Phil. student in the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include political communication, social movements and Hong Kong studies.