The Hong Kong protest, being presented world wide threw various types of social media such as twitter, facebook, and several others. Social media impacted this severe violent act from the protestors side. The Hong Kong protest all began in June of 2019 when Taiwan went against plans to allow Hong Kong’s extradition from a runaway murderer. Although the protest went viral on every type of popular sources of media, it hit twitter a lot and caused a lot of hate towards the Chinese government or towards the Hong Kong protests There were many acts presented in the news sources having connection with many different worldwide used applications and events. After news broke out, several pro Hong Kong movements appeared worldwide.
Blizzard, a well known company known for the creation of games had held a tournament some time around the month of october. As a standard, the winner receives prize money and presents a speech towards many fans watching him live or from behind a screen, and just as he was ending his speech, ended his remarks by reciting the popular Hong Kong protest slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, while wearing a gas mask and dark goggles, the gear that the protesters wear during their street protests. And with China being Blizzard’s top country supporter, Blizzard banned the player from competitions for 12 months and took away his winnings. This resulted in a backlash since fans of the player and Blizzard came at the with hate on twitter. The fans were so passionate about the player that they convinced Blizzard to return the player his winnings and reduced his ban by 6 months just by the tweets they made to the company. Which automatically turned the fans to pro Hong Kong supporters due to the respect they have for the player.
Another related topic is NBA. NBA stands for National Basketball Association. Just a few days after the Blizzard one took place, on the 19th of October, NBA fans joined the anti China display during a match that occured in New York. And footage of the protest and many comments went viral on twitter. This isn’t exactly the first time this had taken place, other games earlier in the month between American teams and Chinese teams had similar demonstrations as well. As this protest keeps occuring, several of the Chinese firms suspended their sponsorship and telecast deals with the NBA which caused the NBA to lose lots of money. Unlike Blizzard NBA didn’t do anything and thought of the situation as free speech, which although impacted them financially it helped the NBA grow more supporters too and more protests against China
Overall, it is visible about how social media, twitter, has impacted the Hong Kong protest by growing the support for liberating Hong Kong. The NBA and Blizzard Tournament events are both benefactors towards the start of people worldwide taking initiative to support pro Hong Kong. It may take a while for the Hong Kong protests to end but if helped internationally it will be solved quickly.