Behind the Technology of Hong Kong’s #UmbrellaRevolution

A look at the technologies and social media channels being used in the war for communications in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations.

There was no looting, no burning of cars, no throwing of glass or rocks, no deaths or lost limbs as pro-democracy demonstrators descended on Hong Kong’s central business district on Sunday, September 28. Instead, digital technologies are enabling both sides to communicate their intentions, coordinate their activities, and share or celebrate their achievements as the days have passed.

Facebook and Twitter have played a big role, just as these platforms did during the Arab Spring, and many other technologies are also being used. What can we learn from all of these digital communication platforms? Here is a quick look at the technologies being used to influence Hong Kong’s future:

Lead Time: Websites, Social Media, and Cross-Platform

Every good cause has a website – to publish press releases, to state the mission of the organization, and communicate en masse to the world. For many people, a website is a website. But http://builtwith.com/ offers an opportunity to see what Web technologies are being used to build sites.

The Demonstrators

A quick look at the Occupy Central With Love and Peace (OCLP) website using builtwith shows it uses a simple Web server, PHP framework, analytics for Facebook, and some added JavaScript libraries.

One of the more cost-effective marketing strategies for any organization is to take a “social media-first” approach to designing a website. This aims to use existing platforms to spread news and content. There is no need for a built-in media player on the site. For this, use YouTube for video, Instagram for photos, Facebook and Twitter for sharing, then spend time linking all the content together to increase the page rank on Google search.

The OCLP Facebook page has more than 85,000 likes. The OCLP Twitter Handle has more than 14,800 followers and the Instagram profile is watched by just more than 1,000 fans. The use of these three “earned” social media platforms, alongside their “owned” Web platform gives the OCLP organization a set of media channels with which to reach, connect to, and build their community of supporters.

The focus of the team can be then be turned to amplifying what their community is doing or saying and to coordinating the protest activities. Less overhead, more results.

The Authorities

The Hong Kong Government has made many advances to its online services and capabilities over the last five years. Upgrading its ability to communicate and transact with citizens across almost all of its facilities. The news Web portal is the main website for communications. It too, uses a simple Apache Web server, and PHP framework, but it uses analytics by Google and has less “social” technologies built in. One major difference is the use of a built-in video player for multimedia. This is common for larger organizations wishing to have more control over content distribution, such as the ability to take content down quickly, but it is more costly.

The government has a very fragmented social media presence, as you would expect from a large multifaceted organization, with 13 Facebook pages, 13 YouTube profiles, eight Twitter handles, and seven blogs. Some might say overkill – especially as they lack consistency and do not interconnect with a single page.

On the Ground

The Demonstrators

Hong Kong is hyper-connected. As of June 2014, Hong Kong has more than 17 million mobile phone subscribers. Phablets, smartphones, and apps are in everyone’s pocket – they are always on, always connected. Mobiles phones and data services are the primary communications channels for any organization that focuses on coordinating where to meet, telling people what is needed, where it is needed, and to allow participants to create photo or video content that celebrates and shares what is happening on the ground.

On Twitter, the @oclphk handles spiked to 2,800 mentions at the end of August. By September 28, the first night of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, it reached more than 11,000.

Using a social media listening tool to review the five most popular hashtags across the Web, we can see that #occupycentral has had more than 259,000 mentions in total over the last 30 days – it gets 2,826 tweets per day, and 118 tweets per hour. #occupyhk is less popular with 18,000 in total over the last 30 days, 201 tweets per day, and only 8.38 tweets per hour. #HK926 started strong with 34,000 mentions, 370 tweets per day, and 15 tweets per hour but it has started to slow down as things have become more peaceful. #UmbrellaMovement has tallied up 10,568 mentions in total over the last 30 days, along with 115 tweets per day and 4.79 tweets per hour.

#UmbrellaRevolution is the second most popular of these five hashtags with over 54,000 mentions in total over the 30 days, averaging 591 tweets per day and 25 tweets per hour. It gives us some perspective when we consider almost all of this activity has happened between Friday, September 28 and Wednesday, October 1.

One mobile app which has really spiked this week is FireChat (which enables “off-the-grid” chatting, with or without Internet connection or mobile phone coverage), reportedly downloaded more than 100,000 times in 24 hours.

Many smartphone users have moved off WhatsApp because of malware being spread through messages.

Chinese Government Censorship

Media remains heavily censored within China, and this past week’s activities have seen that censorship spike significantly. A great way to understand the scale of this censorship is by looking at the number of posts taken off Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, using Weiboscope tool. This site shows an increase of censored posts on Weibo of nearly 700 percent – on August 31, 20 to 40 posts per 10,000 were being shut down. That increased seven-fold on September 28.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter are all blocked in China. You can check whether your favorite site is blocked in China here.

Suspected Malware for iOS and Android Phones

Security companies have discovered the iOS Trojan phone virus “Xsser mRAT” designed to infiltrate iPhones, taking information from iOS keychains such as AppleID and mail accounts. It runs immediately after boot and it is updated automatically. The code is written in Chinese, which suggests a large and sophisticated attack from a Chinese entity.

After the Protests

How the demonstrations will end is yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure: the technologies that help create this story will continue to get smarter, faster, and more useful to all involved.

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