Opinion leadership in a leaderless movement: discussion of the anti-extradition bill movement in the ‘LIHKG’ web forum

Contemporary networked social movements are often described as leaderless. However, social influence is inevitably unevenly distributed across participants, so informal and diffused leaders do exist. This study contends that analysis of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements should examine whether such leadership is stable and what factors might explain who can take on a leadership role. Starting from these premises, this study investigates discussions of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong on the online forum LIHKG. Analyzing millions of movement-related and non-movement-related comments revealed that influence was highly unevenly distributed and that opinion leadership was more unstable in movement-related discussions. Opinion leadership was related to personal characteristics and communication activities, but sometimes in ways that were specific to movement-related discussions. Moreover, opinion leadership tended to stabilize over time. The findings provide insights into the characteristics of informal and diffused leadership in networked social movements.