Collective Protest and Expressive Action Among University Students in Hong Kong: Associations Between Offline and Online Forms of Political Participation

Abstract

Youth have often been described as politically apathetic or disengaged, particularly with respect to more conventional forms of participation. However, they tend to prefer non-institutionalized modes of political action and they may express themselves on the Internet. Young people have also been recognized as having a “latent preparedness” to get politically active when needed. This paper reports forms of offline and online participation adopted by young adults in Hong Kong who were surveyed shortly before the anti-extradition bill social movement of 2019 and 1 year later. The results tentatively suggest that young adults may not be very active in politics when they do not perceive the need to bring about change. However, they are involved in expressive activities and on the Internet more broadly, and ready to turn their latent participation into concrete political participation when they are dissatisfied with government actions and believe it is their responsibility to act against laws perceived to be unjust. Cross-sectional and cross-lagged panel analyses show that youth’s participation in offline political activities is associated with their online participation. Positive effects of past experiences in each mode on participation in offline and online political activities show the mobilizing potential of social media and provide support for the reinforcement hypothesis, though previous participation in offline activities appears as a better predictor of political participation when compared with prior participation on the Internet.

Linking Extraversion to Collective and Individual Forms of Political Participation: The Mediating Role of Political Discussion

“…In the related literature, different concepts of political participation have been extensively discussed. Initially, research focused on electoral participation, that is, voting (Milbrath, 1965), but the Internet has opened new possibilities for citizens to engage in politics (Chadwick and Howard, 2008;Mossberger, Tolbert, and McNeal, 2008) and various forms of social media and online political participation activities have evolved (Kim and Hoewe, 2020;Reichert, 2021;Waeterloos, Walrave, and Ponnet, 2021). By now, the forms of political participation are continuously expanding, including activities such as boycotting, attending street parties, guerilla gardening, posting political blogs, joining flash mobs, signing petitions, or buying fair-trade products (Deth, 2016); these activities are typically conceived as unconventional forms of participation, while voting is often pondered as a conventional one (Ardèvol-Abreu, Gil de Zúñiga, and Gámez, 2020).…”

Hong Kong Adolescents’ Participation in Political Activities: Correlates of Violent Political Participation

“…In the context of Hong Kong, recent studies suggest that youth have become increasingly active in non-institutionalized forms of political participation (Weiss, 2020) and they have a "latent preparedness" (Reichert, 2021) to become politically active when they are dissatisfied with the government and perceive themselves as being responsible to act against unjust laws. Reichert's (2021) study, based on university students, showed that the more students were involved in either online or offline political activities, the less satisfied they were with the government in Hong Kong.…”

Analyses of moral values of student activists’ protest demonstrations in Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University Yogyakarta

“…Student demonstration is part of students' critical characteristics (Reichert, 2021;Revers & Traunmüller, 2020). Being critical is a general nature of students; it is why students are labeled critical activists.…”