Nip, Joyce Yee-man

The Queer Sisters and Its Electronic Bulletin Board: Internet for Social Movement Mobilization

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of the Internet on offline social movement mobilization from the perspective of identity building. It is based on a case study of a women’s group in Hong Kong, the Queer Sisters, and the bulletin board it created on the World Wide Web. Content analysis, an online survey, interviews and observation conducted between September 1999 and October 2000 found that the bulletin board helped to foster a sense of belonging among participants to the Queer Sisters. Increase in the sense of belonging was related to greater participation in the Queer Sisters group. Although the sense of belonging was not accompanied by a political consciousness and fell short of being a collective identity, this paper argues that the potential exists for identity building on the Internet for social movements.