Empowering Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities in Crisis Communication in Hong Kong: An Ethnographic Approach

In the handling of a crisis, effectively communicating crisis information to the populations affected is key. In this regard, residents from linguistic minorities who are not competent in the official national/regional language(s) are often more vulnerable, for instance, members from ethnic minority (EM) communities. Drawing on the theory of communities of practice and the data collected from the multi-sited ethnography encompassing both online and offline spaces, the paper examines how Pakistani and Nepalese EMs in Hong Kong negotiate meanings concerning their identities in a community of practice formed by the practice of collaborative translation that involves the use of digital technologies.