Visualizing History Through Hong Kong Protest Data

Hong Kong Accountability Archive (HKAA) / 2025 / Education, Human Rights, Politics & Government, Racial Equity

Overview

When Hong Kong citizens engaged in largely peaceful protests over a new extradition law, police responded with violence. Videos captured during those chaotic, hopeful months in 2019 and 2020 now serve as a vital record of brutality and human rights violations. As the local government works to rewrite history, Graphicacy helped those behind the Hong Kong Accountability Archive preserve the truth.

Launch Project

Services
CMS Integration
Data Management Solutions
Data Visualization
Engineering
Geospatial Mapping
Interactive Web Applications
UX/UI Design

Background and Challenge:

The Hong Kong Accountability Archive (HKAA) maintains a vast database of street-level footage and arrest records from the protests that swept the city in 2019 and 2020. Their work captures the brutality of riot police deployed by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, from the widespread use of water cannons to the vicious beating of unarmed protesters.

In addition to preserving a historical record, the HKAA team aims to support public investigations and lend credibility to legal challenges. To accomplish those goals, they needed a way to systematically answer questions about the protests using their collected footage. “For instance,” one researcher said, “in addition to seeing the police standing on the road firing tear gas, we wanted to look at the use of tear gas over time, in different places, to really expand what you can reveal about the protests themselves.”

They looked to Graphicacy to design a solution—one that would combine intuitive overviews with journalist-friendly ease-of-use.

Opportunity and Solution:

Graphicacy’s data engineers and designers created three interlinked data visualizations. They share key features, with all three categorizing actions by type and displaying where and when they took place.

From the landing page’s default view, an interactive map shows bubbles representing clusters of actions at a given location, usually grouped by the nearest subway station. A second view groups actions by type, highlighting the different strategies used by police and protestors. The third view documents the evolving scope of the protests by arranging events along an animated timeline. In all three visualizations, clicking a bubble opens a detailed, filter-rich data table of incidents, many linked to videos in the HKAA.

To enhance the visualization’s legal utility, the HKAA team asked Graphicacy to prominently feature filters for Letters of No Objection—whether a protest had formal permission—and whether police gave a warning before engaging in use of force.

Early feedback on the archive speaks to the project’s deep emotional and political value.

“I can't imagine how much time and hard work went into putting this together. The HKAA is a great contribution to the cause of human rights, in Hong Kong and globally."

An activist