Automated Collectives: Communicative Tactics and Social Movement Mobilization

We explicate the concept of human-automated collectives through a case study of the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB movement. Central to the protest repertoire is the (in)visibility of mobilizational messages. A social movement’s success depends significantly on whether protesters can mobilize new participants. In connective action, this becomes an issue of how well protesters can increase the visibility of pro-movement protest frames on social media, while simultaneously lowering the visibility of counter-movement frames. Drawing upon critical technocultural discourse analysis of online forum discussions about digital data and pro-movement social media pages, this study aims to understand (1) how the Anti-ELAB movement activists interpreted the role of digital data and automated media in shaping connective action; and (2) how activists attempted to promote the visibility of mobilizational messages and undermine the visibility of counter-mobilizational messages by gaming the logic of algorithmic operation on social media.