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Kar Ho Chow, National Chengchi University, TaiwanAbstract
The era of social media was said to be a great step of decentralization of discourses, while voices of minorities could be more easily heard. In social movement context, the usage of social media had been increasing, along with an optimistic view that usage of social media can encourage interactions and assemble of power (Wang et al., 2013). The highly-recognized strategy of “Be Water” is closely related to this background. Protestors used social media to communicate, discuss tactics and call for rallies, which had further influenced the social movements in Catalonia, Chile and Belarus. However, instead of celebrating the usage of network and social media in social movements, this article focuses on the limited effects of the “Be Water” tactic. With a panoramic view to the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement (Anti-ELAB), this article analyzes two major incidents, the Polytechnic University conflict, which is a recognized major radical conflict; and the 616 protest, which is claimed to have the highest attendance throughout the whole Anti-ELAB. Online discourses from web forums, news reports and printed literatures are used for a textual and discourse analysis. While, I suggest that the online tactics in social movements did not completely change a social movement, while the difficulties and oppression faced by protestors are not being solved by these tactics. It is hoped to show that “Be Water” strategy and use of social media should not be too optimistically viewed, while lots of oppression are still remaining unsolved in social movement fields.
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Conference: ACCS2025Stream: Media Studies
This paper is part of the ACCS2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Chow K. (2025) Tactics in Networked Social Movements: Case Study of “Be Water” and the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement ISSN: 2187-4751 – The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 161-173) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4751.2025.14
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4751.2025.14
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