Contentious Repertoires: Examining Lennon Walls in Hong Kong’s Social Unrest of 2019

Abstract

Scholars have examined the mobilising roles of text and images played during social movements. Studies of the Lennon Walls in Hong Kong have also discussed how citizens expressed opinions, shared information, and mobilised support for political reform. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the content of post-it notes and images on Lennon Walls and explored how the persuasive functions of movements have been distributed across text and image. In the research reported in this article, 10,000 post-it notes and 2,076 images collected from Lennon Walls across 18 districts in Hong Kong between June 2019 and April 2020 were coded, revealing important differences not only in the discourses presented but also in the persuasive functions of text and image. This analysis provides a more robust analysis of how the Lennon Walls were shaped by Hong Kong contentious repertoires. Meanwhile, Lennon Walls also served as a site of contention bound by its own specific contentious repertoire which demonstrates the spatial practice of counter-framing. This article examines the segmentation and distribution of the movement’s persuasive functions across textual and visual means of communication, in which the legitimacy, acceptance, and diffusion of actions and claims were extensively utilised during the 2019 social unrest.

Key Words:

• Lennon Wall
• Anti-ELAB Movement
• contentious repertoire
• mobilisation
• framing/counter-framing
• Hong Kong

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Wai Ki Wan for taking photos of post-it notes and images in 18 districts of Hong Kong and for manually entering the text data into an Excel file. We appreciate the help of Wai Ki Wan, Chenxiao Zhang, Yunhan Xu, Ruiheng Li with manually coding the images. We also thank Mei Ling Chan for cleaning the data and generating the results. We extend our thanks to John Chung-En Liu for the contribution of his ideas and Hilary Yerbury, the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and feedback.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 These critical events included “612,” referring to June 12, 2019, when around 40,000 protestors gathered outside the Government Headquarters to stall the second reading of the Extradition Bill. The government and the police characterised the protest as a “riot,” while the police were criticised for excessive use of force. The conflict was the most intense between the police and the protestors during the early stage of the Anti-ELAB Movement. Another was “721,” which refers to the evening of July 21, 2019, when alleged triad members dressed in white indiscriminately attacked civilians on the streets in Yuen Long with steel rods and rattan canes. The police were accused of inaction and collusion with the mob. Another important event was “831,” referring to the evening of August 31, 2019, when police allegedly attacked train passengers while arresting protestors in Prince Edward underground station.

2 The online forum LIHKG was widely regarded as a central communication platform for Anti-ELAB Movement supporters (Lee 2020).

3 China National Day is referred to as “National Death Day” by movement sympathisers.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Research Committee, Hong Kong Baptist University under Start-up Tier II Grant [number RC-SGT2/18-19/SOSC/002].