A view of occupy central impacts on Hong Kong tourism from the other side of the great firewall : a rejoinder to Luo & Zhai

Abstract

This paper forms a rejoinder to the paper by Luo & Zhai ("I will never go to Hong Kong again!" How the secondary crisis communication of "Occupy Central" on Weibo shifted to a tourism boycott'). It discusses claims Luo and Zhai (2017) make about negative impacts of Occupy Central protests on tourism sector in Hong Kong and debates application of sentiment analysis to censored social media platforms. The rejoinder concludes that there is no clear evidence that there has been a negative impact of Occupy Central on Hong Kong tourism. It also urges tourism academics to be more critical regarding the sources of information for their studies.