The spontaneous nature of protesters in Umbrella Movement

Abstract

The umbrella movement was defined as a civil disobedience movement (Standnews 2015). At the peak, protesters occupied four areas. In Admiralty, there was organized by different civil social organizations, such as Scholarism and Hong Kong Federation of Students. However, in Mong Kok, the protests were spontaneous. After the dismiss of the movement, a few of them still continue protests in Mong Kok. This paper aims to address why some protesters selected to contribute their power in Mong Kok rather than the relatively organized Admiralty. I reviewed the existing theoretical framework on protest mobilization – social cognition perspective which became the direction of my methodology. This study used semi-structured interviews as primacy method of data collection because it allows researcher to explore social movement participants’ views of reality. By empirical data, this paper argues that social cognition, peer influence and uniqueness of Mong Kok determined the decision-making of protesters.