A comparative study of umbrella movement and fishball revolution from the perspectives of HKU students

Abstract

The dissertation is going to investigate the occurrence of the Umbrella Movement 2014 and the Fishball Revolution 2016 in Hong Kong. The emergence of social movements had happened in 2014 and 2016 respectively; it raises an overarching question that why these two social movements occurred. The dissertation focuses on the political background in Hong Kong. Four social movement theories; namely New Social Movement Theory, Resource Mobilization Theory, Framing Theory and Political Process Theory will be employed to analyze the reasons of these two social movements occurred and identify which theories are the best to explain the current political situation in Hong Kong. Moreover, this paper will evaluate the perspectives of HKU students towards the Umbrella Movement and the Fishball Revolution from an in-depth semi-structured interview in order to gain profound information about the movements. From a peaceful social movement of the Umbrella Movement exploded to a radical riot in two years of time, this dissertation hopefully shed some light on aspect of the government response and what sort of reasons stimulate citizens to participate the movements.