Replication Data for: Transnational Grassroots Outreach and Empirical Evidence from the #HongKongProtests Twitter Network

This study extends the organization-centered transnational advocacy network by presenting how grassroots users strategically utilize social media platforms for achieving their diplomatic and individual-centered engagement with foreign actors. The network analysis and natural language processing of Twitter outreach on Hong Kong protests (N = 88,800) identify the key opinion leaders and the grassroots narratives under three core themes: universal values, humanitarian concerns, and geopolitics. The low threshold of Twitter participation provides extra direct channels for grassroots users to engage with foreign politicians and get their narratives heard. The digital grassroots advocacy network found to have more actors such as corporates and celebrities being involved, given the grassroots ability to pressurize the commercial actors to stand with them. Though the two traditional narratives, universal values and humanitarian concerns, adopted from the organizational-centered outreach still remain prevalent, grassroots users extend geopolitical narratives to incorporate their cultural capital and economic power.