How do activist groups forge consensus on their core claims? This project delves into the collective process through which activists align on key issues such as selecting targets, crafting demands, and adapting to changing environments. Leveraging text data from Telegram, a critical social media platform during the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill protests, Yuan constructs semantic networks to elucidate the framing dynamics among activist groups. This research presents a contrast to existing literature that focuses on the dominance of large organizations (the diffusion model) and the rise of radical groups through mainstream media (the fringe effects model), by proposing an organizational learning model for understanding consensus formation.

Light lunch will be provided.