‘What a shame to Hong Kong’: Chinese users flood Instagram
In an attempt to construct an unfavorable narrative about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong for the eyes of the rest of the world, hundreds of thousands of mainlanders have bypassed the Great Firewall, China’s massive internet filtering system, and flocked to Instagram to denounce the protesters and exhibit solidarity as mainlanders. Congregating around the hashtag #whatashametohongkong, these tech-savvy internet users from the mainland, who are mostly young people with the knowledge of how to use a virtual private network (VPN) service, have been spreading various forms of pro-CCP messages on the platform.
After days of deliberate silence on the turbulent situation in Hong Kong, news outlets in mainland China started this week reporting on the Beijing government’s official responses to the Hong Kong protests. The media coverage, which was largely propaganda-driven and nationalism-fueled, inevitably whipped up some extreme sentiment among patriotic mainlanders, who created the hashtag “Hong Kong terrorists besiege mainland tourists” (香港恐怖分子围攻内地游客 xiānggǎng kǒngbù fènzi wéigōng nèidì yóukè) on Weibo yesterday.
The hashtag quickly trended and has generated more than 85 million views on the micro-blogging platform so far. Its popularity, however, didn’t translate well to a global impact because Weibo is almost exclusively used by internet users in mainland China, who are denied access to social media websites favored by the rest of the world, such as Twitter and Instagram.
In an attempt to construct an unfavorable narrative about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong for the eyes of the rest of the world, hundreds of thousands of mainlanders have bypassed the Great Firewall, China’s massive internet filtering system, and flocked to Instagram to denounce the protesters and exhibit solidarity as mainlanders. Congregating around the hashtag #whatashametohongkong, these tech-savvy internet users from the mainland, who are mostly young people with the knowledge of how to use a virtual private network (VPN) service, have been spreading various forms of pro-CCP messages on the platform.
Below are some examples:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Jhn6fBjJv/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JhZ0tl3F9/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Jhx1yFZjE/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JiKeCFhE1/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Jivi6g5Z9/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JjneHldw-/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JnlTZgdlS/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JrR5-l1CY/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JtB5jnEzX/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Jt3zqhpcv/
