Social media discourse – Language Culture and Society in Hong Kong (and beyond)

by Aaron Chan

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by coronavirus, a family of viruses which can lead to severe respiratory syndromes (SARS) which have taken away millions of lives. In Hong Kong, there are over one thousand cases, with the first case confirmed on 23^rd January, 2020. Before the outbreak in this international city, Hong Kong citizens, who are mostly technologically literate, have already got updates about the pandemic through different sources. It is commonly agreed among those Hongkongers that the pandemic is from Wuhan, China, and together with the political movement against the Hong Kong government, those Hongkongers are active in producing propaganda and spreading the news that China is an evil country. In this article, political stances and opinions will not be the focus of discussion. Instead, the language and the images of related propaganda will be the main talking points.

Among the propaganda, most of the pictures employed ironic and humorous ways to express their dissatisfaction towards the government or related authorities, or to convey the message that COVID-19 is originated from, or even made in China. As the virus is identified after a series of political movements against the introduction of Extradition Bill in Hong Kong, the propaganda often involves elements about the political ideology of the creators. Figure A is an example of the propaganda mentioned above.

In the left-hand side of the graphic, the woman standing and talking is Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. She once infamously said, ‘it was no longer meaningful to close the border.’ This is exactly what first line of the texts in bottom left means. In the second line, ‘攬炒之母’ means ‘the mother of mutual destruction,’ which is used to describe Carrie Lam action is destroying the whole Hong Kong.

Solely from these texts, we already know that there is some sort of dissatisfaction from the creator of this graphic and those who have the same stance. If we are to analyse this with the definition in (3-2), it, obviously falls into the aspect of satisfaction in Appraisal– the creator wants to convey a sense of anger through writing ‘攬炒之母’. In the right-hand side of the picture, there are a lot of green zombie-looking objects, rushing through a door, above which is a sign with simplified Chinese, meaning ‘welcome’ Those ‘zombies’ symbolise mainlanders who rush to Hong Kong for shelters as mainland China has been regarded as a dangerous place even by the mainlanders. The sign of ‘welcome’ is an irony addressing Carrie Lam’s rejection to close the border. In this context, the creator of the graphic wants its audience, who are generally Hongkongers, to apply judgement in Appraisal – to think that Carrie Lam acts in a reckless way (tenacity), if not an immoral way (propriety). This is, overall, an effective picture with its implication well conveyed.

Figure A is only an example of such propaganda against the government. The picture is extracted from https://wars.vote4.hk/poster-gallery, from which a lot of pictures are worth analysing. Humour and irony is often used to express the hopelessness and ridiculousness in the users’ eyes. Propaganda, albeit biased, is a good way to spread ideology and use humour and irony to express opinions.

by Jason Szeto

With the advanced development of social media, it has allowed us to do in terms of communication and action that we were not able to do before. With social media, we can easily search for any information we need, get to know any breaking news around the globe or even catch up with our friends through different applications. Social media, like Facebook or Instagram, has greatly brought people closer in this modern era.

Social media seems beneficial and has no drawbacks. Nowadays, people can express their opinions and even vote on the Internet. Many websites and new platforms have integrated social media sites such as Twitter into their interface, allowing people to easily ‘like’ and ‘share’ about something interesting they saw on the Internet. People can now express their comments about social or political issues with nothing more than one click of a mouse, raising the concern of what is being achieved by these actions when very little thought or effort is required while high levels of political and civic participation keep increasing together with the rapid growth of social media websites.

The term ‘slacktivism’ is then created and is used to describe people who want to be activists while slacking at the same time. One of the examples where the phenomenon of slacktivism was identified would be the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. It had swept through the globe in 2014 for the release of a group of Nigerian schoolgirls that were kidnapped by a local Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram (BH). Activists carried out demonstrations in Abuja and the incident gone viral on Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Countless netizens like and retweet posts with the above hashtag and hope to raise awareness in the public and other countries’ intervention. Most importantly, to force the Nigeria government to rescue the kidnapped girls as soon as it can.

The #BringBackOurGirls campaign was effective in raising others’ awareness but it was regarded as a failure as some schoolgirls are still missing now. Many of the campaign participants failed to provide any plausible solutions for the current situation. They like, retweet and share their opinions on Twitter and Facebook with little effort is required but considering a great accomplishment in return for their actions behind.

Yet, forms of ‘Slacktivism’ can still be an opportunity for causes to gain more awareness, like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that was launched in 2014. The campaign went viral and many celebrities participated in the campaign too. It ignited much attention around the world and successfully raised a considerable amount of money for future research of the disease. Still, launching campaigns on the Internet becomes the trend now. We can say that people who engage in slacktivism are not doing enough but at least, it is a great start and may lead to actual activism, thus having powerful real-world impacts as time goes by.