After Final Fantasy: 
Frustration and Fragmentation 
in the Social Media driven Umbrella Movement

Sociology Capstone Project

Lee Ka Man 3035178351


Introduction 3 ......................................................................

Literature Review 4 ..............................................................Common characteristics of Social media driven movement 4 ....................................Strengths of Social media 5 ...........................................................................................Weaknesses of Social media 8 .......................................................................................

Research Focus 10 ................................................................

Methodology 11 ....................................................................Quantitative Study 11 ....................................................................................................

Data showing the popularity of Social Media 11 .................................................................

Results of Facebook Contents analysis 14 ....................................................................Qualitative Study 15 ......................................................................................................

Interview results with young radical activist 16 ..................................................................Interview results with experienced social movement participant 18 .................................

Discussion and Implications 19 ...............................................Social Media intensifies fragmentation of Umbrella Movement 19 ..........................

Anonymity and prompt delivery 19 ....................................................................................Clear boundaries of “Us” and “Them” 20 ...........................................................................Leaderless and decentralized design 20 .............................................................................

Young and inexperienced activists are hard-hit by the fragmentation 21 .................Ages and experiences matter to the frustration 21 .............................................................Lack in tolerance to different political course 22 ...............................................................Trauma remains because of Facebook 23 ...........................................................................

Suggested solution 24 ............................................................

Conclusion 25 .......................................................................

Reference 26........................................................................

Introduction This book aims at examining

and explaining the negative

effects of social media in the

Umbrella Movement and the

frustration remains in young

activists. It will first evaluate

the significance and of social media in the mobilization of the social

movement. It argues that social media played a significant role in the

Umbrella Movement. However, it brought fragmentation in social

media among the participants in different political spectrum. Further

to the contextual analysis on the social media sites, we discuss the

significance and drawbacks of social media in the movement.

To this end, an obvious frustration can be observed among the

society. And they essay will investigate why, and record how is it

formed. Above all, in addition to the variety and affordance of the

media, it emphasize the competence and dexterity of the young

activists in utilizing these resources and in deploying different

strategies, both online and offline. They are the one involved deeply,

to create resonance and to co-write the historical moment. However,

they are the one who are deeply disappointed and frustrated with the

movements too. The essay will try to figure out possible solutions on

this situation.

Literature Review Common characteristics of Social media driven movement

Due to the rapid technological development, social media has

become an indispensable part in our life. Not only utilizing it connect

with our friends and get updates to the timely information, we

adopted it in social movements. In recent years, waves of social

movement occurred around the world, including The Arab Spring,

The Sunflower movement and as well as The Umbrella Movement.

Social media has been a popular topic of in a lot of studies, which

examine the relationship between social movement and Social media.

Social movements sprung up in the Cyber-age, which are also known

as the ‘networked social movements’ (Castells, 2012) and a blend of

‘connective actions and collective actions’ (Bennett & Segerberg,

2013), share a set of notable common characteristics. Unlike

traditional social movements, they were operated with a new ‘self-

help’ and ‘self-actualization’ ethos (Lee, So & Leung, 2015), “The

participants in the movements conceived of themselves as

autonomous individuals submitting themselves to collective actions

only through consensus.” (357)

Strengths of Social media

Social media support the social movements in some sense. First,

social media offers a platform for the marginalized groups.

According to (Lee, So & Leung 2015: 360) , they mentioned that

social media created an “Insurgent Public Sphere” (IPS), “IPS as a

public space for counterpublics to interconnect, discuss issues,

construct collective identity, articulate common goals, and engage in

collective actions, online or offine, in direct opposition to and

confrontation against the dominant public, the state or the

market.”(360) If there are any dissenting views online, social media

favors their distribution as there are lower entry barriers, higher cost-

effectiveness with wide coverage of huge audience and faster

distribution when compared to mass media. (Arditi, 2012: Bennett,

2012; Castells, 2012) In the past, if the anti-establishment views

wanted to reach the public, they need to rely on the conventional

mass media to cast pressure on government and push forward

changes. People nowadays can publicize their views through social

networking sites, and reach a large group of audience even from

other countries. And the speed of distribution is much higher in

social media.

Another factor contributing to the IPS nature of social media is the

“filtering” effect of the individual network (Pariser, 2011). Since

social media users are engaged in “private” communication and have

control over the content to which they are exposed, they are likely to

con ne their contacts to like-minded people and to avoid those

whom they would like to ignore. This echo chamber effect (Garrett,

2009) will reinforce existing and inclining views embraced by the

counterpublics. (371)

The individuated nature of SNSs, unlike organized institutions such as

the press, school, or church, makes state or market control more

difficult and costly. However, the cost for SNS users to set up a site

or to become a node in a network is much lower. In the conventional

form of social mobilization that stresses leadership and discipline,

loose groups are usually not included in massive social actions

because the cost of coordinating them and putting them within

bounds is high. Social media, however, can reduce the costs of

coordinating undisciplined groups and facilitate diverse marginalized

groups to join hands for a common cause. More importantly, social

media helps to create “shared awareness”, i.e., understand the

situation at hand and understand that everyone else does, which is a

crucial form of coordination for collective action (Shirky, 2011). This

shared awareness can be increased within a short time because

messages are sent out by SNS users horizontally without going

through various hierarchies. (360-361)

Third, social media not only help to activate latent ties that may be

crucial to the mobilization of networked publics, but also enables

expression and information sharing that liberates the individual and

the collective imagination (Papacharissi, 2014). The audience base of

anti-establishment networking sites can be expanded quickly through

many-to- many and mass self-communication (Castells, 2009),

solving the long-existing problem of using alternative media but

failing to reach a large audience (Owens & Palmer, 2003). (371) Earl

and Kimport (2011) argued that digital media could have both

‘‘supersize effects” and ‘‘theory 2.0 effects” on social movements.

The former refers to how digital media facilitate more powerful and

efficient mobilization. The latter refers to how the affordances of

digital media may lead to new forms of social movements. Castells

(2012) saw the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street (OWS) as

examples of ‘‘networked social movements”, whereas Bennett and

Segerberg (2013) theorized the logic of connective actions. (458)

Weaknesses of Social media

Nevertheless, it is also argued that social media are undermined and

constrained by extrinsic limitations. First, ‘slacktivism’ is one of major

critiques (Gladwell, 2010; Morozov, 2010). ‘Slacktivists’ think that

social media ‘could not motivate people to make real sacrifices and

take high risks’ (Lee & Ting, 2015: 379). Some scholars even find that

Internet might detriment the engagement of social movements

because citizens may have less time participate offline protests or

join political groups when they are used to join some kind of casual

and entertaining online movements (Putnam, 1995, 2000). In

contrast, traditional mass media retain and maintain their eminence

and effectiveness, that still serve as the dominant media and

information source during the mobilization and initial period of the

movement in many cases, especially television and newspapers

(Habibul, 2011; Lin, 2016).

Besides, some scholars believed that Social Media failed to support

the long-term protest in Social Movement. Tufekci (2014) argued

that Social Media is a double-edged sword in social movement. The

leaderless and decentralised movement prevented protest groups

from becoming as cohesive and robust as they need to be in order

to survive over a long period of time. (12). He mentioned in social

media driven movements, the decision making process tend to be

informal and key tasks are mainly performed by “ad-hoc committees

of volunteers”. Therefore, consensus is so hard to make as

participants will “find themselves unable to respond to government

actions or to decide their next course of action.” (14). Tufekci

believed that a successful social movement requires long period of

time but the loose coordinating committee lack formal legitimacy

and recognition, which make the movement cannot be sustained

over many years and often run into energy depletion within a few

months.

Tufekci has made use of the example of the social movement, Gezi

Park movement in Turkey at the end of May 2013. He has stated that

the movement also rely on social movement for mobalization and

organization that led to informal institutionalized decision-making.

“the Gezi Park movement broke up into small groups to discuss the

matter, which took many hours. In the end, no real resolution was

reached because some formal institutions that had taken part in the

protests decided to end them, leaving behind a symbolic tent, while

many individuals and some other collectives wanted to stay. This

caused even more confusion, and the government moved in shortly

after with a massive police presence and disbanded the camp by

force.” (15). It underlined the fragmentation occurred and unable to

foster further threat to government and even undermine the power

among the participants.

Research Focus

In this study, it evaluates the influences of social media in the Umbrella

Movement. I try to examine the role played by social media in the

Umbrella Movement and if it resulted in fragmentation among the

participants. Hence, the emotional impacts will be taken into account to

explain the frustration observed in the post-umbrella movement period.

My analysis begins with a research on the significance of social media

during umbrella movements and the Facebook content analysis during the

79 days of occupation in order to figure out the different division resulted.

The last section examines the frustrations and scars left on the young

activists and participants caused by the social media.

Methodology In order to gather more information to support the arguments, both

qualitative and quantitative researches are done.

Quantitative Study

Data showing the popularity of Social Media

A simple interview question is asked on “To what extent do you rely on

Social Media during Umbrella Movement” during the capstone fair. (Figure

1) The respondents are from the passengers and the audience. 28 valid

responses are received. and 78% of respondents agree to a larger extent

(4 or more) that they rely on Social Media to receive information, convey

opinions and mobilize partiplants etc..

Besides, secondary statistics and data from previous studies on websites

can are also collected. They clearly demonstrate the developing trend of

social media. In Figure 2, it shows that there has been more than 2 billion

internet users are using social networks from 2015 and these figures are

still predicted to grow. Figure 3 illustrates the market leader Facebook

holds 1.968 billion monthly active users in April 2017.

Figure 1. Result of how much people rely on Social Media during Umbrella Movement

Figure 2. Number of social media users worldwide from 2010 to 2020 (in billions)

Figure 3. Most famous social network sites worldwide as of April 2017, ranked by

number of active users (in millions)

Results of Facebook Contents analysis

The popularity of Facebook as a Social Networking Sites in Hong Kong has

been acknowledged. Yet, the contents in Facebook during the Umbrella

Movement have to be further analyzed so as to understand how Social

media leads to fragmentation of the movement by investigating how

different camps has been formed. The Facebook posts from 3 major

pages including “Hong Kong Federation of Students” (香港專上學⽣生聯聯會),

“Scholarism” (學⺠民思潮), and “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” (讓愛與

和平佔領中環) have been reviewed. Posts with negative comments from 26

September, 2014 to 15 December, 2014 are classified into categories.

According to the commentary from a netizens 無⽅方 (2014) posted on

inmediaHK (Figure 4)

Figure 4. The classification of the people’s stances towards Umbrella Movement

the analysis result shows that among the pro-movement participants, many

different camps existed. The major top 3 camps will be 1. Radical activists

(orange ribbon) 2. conservative participants (yellow ribbon) 3. The

silenced (green ribbon). They mainly differ from the attitude towards the

“level-up” actions for the Umbrella Movement. The radical activists

generally support upgrading the action which may involve violence so as

to cast more pressure to government while the conservative participants

refused levelling up in order to remain the movement peaceful. The

silenced usually blame the both sides and support the police. They had

quarrel online on different Facebook pages with personal insult and the

fragmentation intensified.

Qualitative Study

For the sake of knowing how the fragmentation from Social Media leading

to the frustration of the participants, in-depth personal interview with

representatives from different camps are conducted to understand their

feelings and reactions regarding to the conflicts on Social Media. Besides,

it is believed that their political enlightenments and past experiences in

participating in social movements are related to the frustration and

disappointment appear after the Umbrella movement. Samuel Lai and

Damon Wong are chosen for the interview.

Interview results with young radical activist

An in-depth interview with Samuel Lai, a 22 years old activist preferred a

relatively radical action during umbrella movement, who has experienced

the violent clearance on 30 November, 2014. (Figure 5)

In the interview, Samuel shared his political background. He mentioned

that the Umbrella Movement is the event that enlightened his awareness to

politics. In the past, he was indifferent to politics as he thought those

issues are far to him. Nevertheless, the civic lecture held at admiralty

before the outbreak of the Umbrella Movement has inspired him the

significance of liberty and democracy. Without any experiences on social

movement, he has really high expectation in gaining genuine outcome for

the movement.

He devoted all his time and energy on the umbrella movement including

participating in occupation everyday, mobilising his classmates and

hallmates, joining the propaganda team and so forth. When time gone by,

he became anxious of the development of the movement, with strong fear

of the failure of the Umbrella Movement. So he proposed levelling up the

action, “When the current occupation cannot affect any of the government

officers in the middle of the movement, we have to do more, whatever we

can, try to bring changes.” (Lai, 2017).

Figure 5. Samuel Lai, who was attacked by police on the levelling up action on 30 Nov

Figure 5 has shown that his thought leading to the further violence by the

police and the failure of the action. He was criticized by the netizens with

personal insult. The end of the Umbrella Movement made Samuel

depressed until today. “Its like all in vain. (Lai, 2017). He was frustrated until

today.“It (Umbrella Movement) has changed my life.”, (Lai, 2017). He is

unsure about the future of Hong Kong and as well as himself.

Interview results with experienced social movement participant

Another interviewee is Damon Wong, Chun Pong, one of the members of

League of Social Democrats, starting to participate in politics since the 7.1

march in 2003. He has participated in various student and social

movements including preserving Queen's Pier, anti-rail protests and so on.

Regarding the Umbrella Movement, he did not feel disappointed, “I know

its not gonna succeed since the second day of the movement.” (Wong,

2017). From the past experiences in social movements and histories from

other countries, Damon understands Democratization takes time. Decades

and even centuries are required. So he treats those movements as steps

that get closer to closer to the final destination.

He did not agree Social Media creates conflicts. “People argue a lot in

every movements.” (Wong, 2017). But it cannot be denied that social

media intensified the fragmentation due to its high delivering speed and

huge coverage.

He regards himself as mild participants in Umbrella Movement but he said

he respected other camps with different proposition as diversifying the

ways of protests are necessary. “Everyone has their own duties, there’s

nothing wrong. The key is being united in the final goal” (Wong, 2017)

Discussion and Implications Social Media intensifies fragmentation of Umbrella Movement

The extraordinary features of Social Media favours the mobilization of the

Umbrella Movement in some sense. However, those features at the same

time is the “double-edged sword”, which will split people into different

camps quickly via social networking sites.

Anonymity and prompt delivery

First of all, the “Insurgent Public Sphere” allows people to discuss the

opinions on the future development of the Umbrella Movement. (Lee, So

& Leung 2015: 360) Unlike the conventional protest, participants need not

to rely on mass media to convey their own message to the counter

publics. For instance, regarding to the levelling up action on 30 Nov,

people now express their dissenting views without hierarchies on social

media. So, if people holds different views, they crack quarrels via

Facebook directly with strangers all around the world. The messages

delivery are prompt and with huge coverage. Besides, Social Media allows

interactions with anonymous identities. People are more willing to argue

with others without rationality and even with personal insult as they think

no responsibilities are going to bear. This intensifies the conflicts on Social

Media.




Clear boundaries of “Us” and “Them”

In addition, the “Echo Chamber Effect” (Garrett, 2009) on Social Media not

only creates collective identities for the participants, but also enhance the

boundaries drawn between “Us” and “Them”. (Tajfel, 1979). Due to the

setting on Facebook, users are more likely to interact with the like-minded

users. According to the social identity theory (Tajfel, 1979), boundaries

between “Us” and “Them” will be clearly cut based on social

categorizations. The members among “Us” enjoy the shared awareness

and tend to refuse to merge with “Them”. In the case of the Umbrella

Movement, the “Echo Chamber Effect” on Social Media clearly

categorized participants in different color which represents different

political spectrum. For instance, people may just distinguish “friends” from

the colors of the ribbons on their profile pictures. Some of them did not

even want to have intellectual discussion with people on the other side.

This leads to the “Tide of Unfriend”, which further accentuates the

fragmentation of the participants.

Leaderless and decentralized design

According to Damon Wong (2017), he figured out that people with

different stances on a social movement is commonly seen in the past. As

the large-scaled movements involved huge audience and it is impossible to

request everyone have the exactly same mind on every decision made.

However, in the past, participants of the movements are more likely to

obey the decision made by the organizers, which usually a political party

or an official political organization. “As long as you got the mic, people

listen to you.” (Wong, 2017). Neverthess, on the digital era, the social

media driven Umbrella Movement are no longer following this way of

protest. Social Media now emphasizes on “decentralized” and

“leaderless” (Tufekci, 2014). When everyone is given equal political right to

voice out and make decision via Facebook, they are least likely to make a

concession. Therefore diverse opinions existed during the Umbrella

Movement including using violence, remain occupying, retreat and leave

an “I will be back” banner and so forth. No consensus was reached and

conflicts keep being enhanced.

Young and inexperienced activists are hard-hit by the fragmentation

After conducting in-depth interviews with both young activists and

experienced political figure, an obvious discrepancy on their expected

outcome to Umbrella Movement are observed. The young participants

tend to be more optimistic to the influence of the Umbrella Movement.

They believed that such an large-scaled and internationally concerned

movement will bring universal suffrage to Hong Kong. On the other hand,

experienced political figure believed that the Umbrella Movement are

steps but not destiny to democracy.

Ages and experiences matter to the frustration

The case of Samuel is a good example illustrating the views of the young

participants in Umbrella Movement, which is the very first political event

they took part in. Without the reference from the past events and political

issues, that is why they will be over-optimistic somehow. Therefore they

are willing to devote all the time, heart and soul on the Umbrella

Movement and longing for a victory in returns. Also, they beautify the

Umbrella Movement as “fighting for justice, revealing of civic

consciousness, and united rebellion”. In this sense, they do not expect the

criticism and fragmentation. Therefore, they were particularly

disappointed and frustrated after seeing the brutal reality of social

movement. They are further hard-hit by the failure of the movement.

Using the quote from Samuel, “Its like all in vain.” can perfectly describe

their hopelessness and helplessness.

Lack in tolerance to different political course

From the interview with Samuel (2017), He can hardly acknowledge other

political course. For example, he deemed singing political songs as

“childish”, “fictitious contentment” and “consuming the Umbrella

Movement”. He think being more radical is the only way leading to the

success of the movement. He own hostility to other ways to protest.

Unlike Samuel, Damon believed that multi-approaches are needed in social

movement. “Someone goes with valiant acts and someone backed up with

mild acts” (Wong, 2017). He proposed the cooperation among protestors

even with different political stances. The lack in tolerance to different

political stances made Samuel undergoes further fragmentation and

frustration after the movement.

Trauma remains because of Facebook

In general cases, when time goes by, the frustration and disappoint can

disappear gradually. However, the functions of Facebook made the

Trauma remain. Facebook launched the functions of “old memories”,

which reminds people what happened in the previous years. It revitalized

the frustration every year and recalls the cruel memories of the

movement. Those participants indulge in the sorrow of the Umbrella

Movement constantly. This made them hard to get rid of the defeatism

and gain the motivation to participate in politics.

It is common to hear that people become indifferent to politics or plan

migration to other countries. As those young participants can no longer

think of other ways out. Giving up seems to be the only option. It explains

why political atmosphere became worse and worse after the Umbrella

Movement especially among the younger generation.

Suggested solution The aims of the book not only try to address the reasons of the

fragmentation and frustration in the social media driven Umbrella

Movement, also search for possible solution relieving the pessimistic

political atmosphere in Hong Kong. In the capstone fair, public are also

engaged to brainstorm any way out.

Scholars put forward the significance of studying histories and theories.

The political event occurred today shaped the history. Therefore, we can

learn a lesson from other countries’ histories by taking reference to their

past experiences, avoiding their errs and taking their keys to success. By

comparing the similar cases can we understand the complex nature of

democratization. Keep learning provides us with motivation to strive for

democracy of Hong Kong.

In the case of the Umbrella Movement, there are a lot of questions left

after the movement and the answers cannot be obtained among general

public. Getting back to theories offer explanation to those questions. And

when we equipped ourselves with branches of political knowledge, we are

able to have intellectual exchange with friends and people on Social Media.

Deliberation takes place and personal insult can be avoided. By doing so,

we can have the same goal even with different paths.

Conclusion This book argued that social media is a double-edged sword to social

movements. Consistent with Shirky’s findings (2011), it stressed it is the

complex, concentrated and participatory communication landscape

happened under social media that has fostered both online and offline

collective actions; and enhanced the public's ability to coordinate and

mobilize social momentum. At the same time, the leaderless and

decentralized features of the Social Media cannot support the long term

protests. The in-depth interviews revealed the discrepancy between young

and experienced participants. The Social Media is obviously intensifying

the conflicts and fragmentation of the Umbrella Movement. And Facebook

as the most famous Social networking sites in Hong Kong has pushed on

the Trauma remains even after 3 years of the movement.

In light of the advancement of communication technologies, there is a

trend for social media to continue playing a supporting role in various

form of protest actions. However, it is found that online social media like

Facebook has become more complicated with the placement of

advertisements and intervention of “secret sponsors” (Lee & Ting, 2015;

personal communication, March 6, 2017), which may largely affect their

information reliability. Further research on the mobilization of social

movements could therefore pay attention to the dynamic change of

mobilizing power in social media.

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