Momentary symbols: Tracing the visual expressions of collectives

Abstract

While a growing sociological literature documents how visuality shapes collective identities, less attention is given to the temporal dimension of symbol construction and the shifting meanings and practices associated with prominent images and objects. We introduce the concept of momentary symbols to describe and examine processes where objects for a shorter period rapidly grow into a dominant symbol for a collective, but just as quickly acquire a less central symbolic role. We demonstrate the empirical relevance of this concept by tracing how umbrellas, lasers, and masks became central but temporally contingent visual symbols of Hong Kong's protest movement, Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB). Specifically, we use methods from computational sociology (including dictionary classification, object detection, and actor-network visualisations) and tweets about the 2019 Hong Kong protests (N = 1,615,832) to trace the provisional and unstable characteristics of Anti-ELAB's visual expressions. Drawing on actor-network theory, we analyse objects and technologies as non-human actants that express protest and oppositional voices alongside humans. Results show that the three actants (umbrellas, lasers, and masks) oscillate between symbolic-visual and practical-confrontative translations during the protest period. Our study demonstrates the relevance of using processual and temporal approaches to capture the erratic and volatile nature of symbol construction processes.