Blending Topic Modeling and Social Network Analysis: Big Data Analysis of the Hong Kong Protests

Principal Investigator: 

Prof Richard WALKER
Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences;
Chan Hon Pun Professor of Behavioural and Policy Sciences;
Acting Head and Chair Professor of Department of Public Policy

Co-Principal Investigator:

Advisor:

Prof Jonathan ZHU (Chair Professor, Department of Media and Communication; Chair Professor, School of Data Science)

Project Period: 1 January 2020 – 31 December 2021

Digital communication technologies have played a critical role in modern-day protests around the globe in the last decade. The Hong Kong protests have operated across diverse traditional media and social media platforms (a Reddit-like forum, Telegram channels, Instagram graphics and Facebook pages), under a hybrid regime, and an extremely high level of social media and smart phone penetration rate. The length of time the Hong Kong protests have continued may have increased the proximity of trusted networks, political efficacy, or cyberbalkanization. This temporal variable would then mediate the logic of connective actions and future patterns of political participation. This setting is ideal for big data analysis in (1) Discover the characteristics of connective actions and the sentiments of active political subjects; (2) Examine the interconnected roles of different actors and organizations in terms of mobilization, coordination, and diffusion and (3) Expand the conceptualization of modern-day protests.

The project aims to achieve the following research objectives:

1. To provide open source data from traditional news and social media sources documenting the Hong Kong protest event that has attracted unprecedented global attention.
2. To use computational social sciences to topic model the movement frames of anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill/anti-government (here on in the Hong Kong) protests and contrast traditional news sources with protestors’ use of social media.
3. To conduct a detailed social network analysis to unpack the mobilizing structure of the Hong Kong protests and expand the conceptualization of contemporary connective actions.
4. To produce academic research and enhance collaboration between the disciplines of organizational science, political science and communication studies using big data.

 Publications

1. An Eye for an Eye? An Integrated Model of Attitude Change Toward Protest Violence
   Zhu, Y., Cheng, E. W., Shen, F. & Walker, R. M., Jul 2023, In: Political Communication. 39, 4, p. 539–563 25
2. Surveying Spontaneous Mass Protests Mixed-mode Sampling and Field Methods
   Yuen, S., Tang, G., Lee, F. L. F. & Cheng, E. W., Feb 2022, In: Sociological Methodology. 52, 1, p. 75-102
3. Repression, Emotion, Contagion : Analyzing the (De)Escalation of Protest Violence
   Cheng, E. W., Zhu, Y., Walker, R. M. & Shen, F., Oct 2021, In: 2021 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting & Exhibition
4. Affordances, movement dynamics, and a centralized digital communication platform in a networked movement
   Lee, F. L. F., Liang, H., Cheng, E. W., Tang, G. K. Y. & Yuen, S., Feb 2021, In: Information Communication and Society. 25, 12, p. 1699-1716