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14 / Periscope

A protester takes photos of a fire outside Wan Chai MTR Station.

Telegram on the front line tial monitoring by authorities. This app has
avis, a fourth-year university student, who declines to re- become one of the most downloaded apps in
veal his full name, participates as a frontline protester in the city amid the ongoing protests, accord-
Dthe anti-extradition bill protests, which have gripped the ing to mobile data provider Sensor Tower.
city for months. Like many other Hong Kong young people, the Some public channels which provide in-
21-year-old takes to the streets to demand political self-determi- stant information on the movement, have
nation and autonomy of the city. up to more than 200,000 subscribers, repre-
Different from conventional social movements, this pro- senting over two per cent of Hong Kong’s
democracy campaign sparked by a controversial and now-aban- entire population. The information usually
doned bill is leaderless, faceless and nameless. Without veteran comes from reports and citizens who call
political leaders directing courses of action, this time, Hong Kong themselves “sentries”, tipping off the chan-
protesters adopt a citizen self-mobilisation approach: they turn nels first-hand updates about locations of
to social media platforms to organise themselves. police and traffic situations. The immediate
“We acquire information from Telegram and discuss our next access to information facilitates protesters’
steps at the scene accordingly,” Davis says, describ- wildcat and guerrilla-like actions, which
ing how he communicates and makes decisions invokes the Bruce Lee-inspired “Be Water”
collectively with other frontline protesters. He philosophy.
says they freely share their opinions on the Davis says sometimes frontline protest-
spot and those who are more familiar with ers quarrel with each other because of their
the area they are in will point out some secret different views on what to do next. “But if
escape routes only residents of that particular
district know. We acquire infor-
Davis Telegram is an encrypted messaging app
which allows users to create public channels mation from Telegram and
to share information. Users can also create smaller private chat discuss our next steps at the
groups to have conversations without displaying their telephone
numbers or identities so that they can be protected from poten- scene accordingly.