Opinion leadership in a leaderless movement: discussion of the anti-extradition bill movement in the ‘LIHKG’ web forum

ABSTRACT

Contemporary networked social movements are often described as leaderless. However, social influence is inevitably unevenly distributed across participants, so informal and diffused leaders do exist. This study contends that analysis of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements should examine whether such leadership is stable and what factors might explain who can take on a leadership role. Starting from these premises, this study investigates discussions of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong on the online forum LIHKG. Analyzing millions of movement-related and non-movement-related comments revealed that influence was highly unevenly distributed and that opinion leadership was more unstable in movement-related discussions. Opinion leadership was related to personal characteristics and communication activities, but sometimes in ways that were specific to movement-related discussions. Moreover, opinion leadership tended to stabilize over time. The findings provide insights into the characteristics of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements.

KEYWORDS:

• Networked social movement
• leaderlessness
• online forum
• opinion leadership
• stability of leadership
• Hong Kong

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hai Liang

Hai Liang is an Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include computational social science, political communication, and public health.

Francis L.F. Lee

Francis L.F. Lee is a Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the lead author of 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: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (Oxford University Press, 2018).