Loyalty to WeChat beyond national borders: a perspective of media system dependency theory on techno-nationalism

Luqiu, Luwei Rose; Kang, Yi

doi:10.1080/17544750.2021.1921820

Cited by 12 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, blamed the protest movement on the machinations of ‘foreign powers’ in their feature-length documentary entitled Another Hong Kong in May 2020 (Vickers and Morris 2022 ). The image of HK as a chaotic place disrupted by unruly rioters was also popularised throughout Chinese social media and found a wide audience among the Chinese diaspora (Luqiu and Kang 2021 ). Of the 25 Year 1 and Year 2 students whose decision to study in HK may have been impacted by the then-ongoing pandemic, only four participants identified it as the sole factor that made them come to HK.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Applying media system dependency theory, which hypothesises that media shapes consumers’ understanding of their environment and action, researchers demonstrated that media consumption on WeChat stuck to old media consumption habits. In addition, the indispensability of WeChat enabled the Chinese government to actively control media and propaganda and transcend national boundaries (Luqiu and Kang 2021 ). A Chinese University of Hong Kong professor described Chinese media, as well as social media’s portrayal of the 2019 HK protests, as propaganda that intercepted ‘a small part of the information, distorting it and magnifying’ (Kuo 2019b ).…”

Section: Discussion: Crisscrossing Scapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A Chinese University of Hong Kong professor described Chinese media, as well as social media’s portrayal of the 2019 HK protests, as propaganda that intercepted ‘a small part of the information, distorting it and magnifying’ (Kuo 2019b ). Stories about thuggish riots, Western infiltration, and secessionists jeopardising Chinese sovereignty go viral on WeChat (Luqiu and Kang 2021 ). Consequently, HK’s alienation from the mainland was labelled as a ‘misrecognition of a shared cultural essence’ fermented by malign Western interference (Vickers and Morris 2022 , p. 191) rather than HK citizens fighting for their rights.…”

Section: Discussion: Crisscrossing Scapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crisscrossing scapes in the global flow of elite mainland Chinese students

Woo

2023

High Educ

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This paper applies Appadurai’s notion of scapes in globalisation to study international student mobility. Thirty mainland Chinese students were interviewed; the majority of whom studied at prestigious institutions in the West before enrolling in their current PhD programmes at a research-intensive university in Hong Kong (HK) in the immediate aftermath of HK’s large-scale social protests and amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. We seek to understand why these students relocated to HK to further their studies given these turbulent circumstances and how their mainlander identity and sojourns in the West influence their perceptions of HK’s social movements from the perspectives of ethnoscape and ideoscape, respectively. Our findings reveal that HK represented the ‘best’ compromise for our participants, mitigating their nostalgia for home (i.e. mainland China) whilst offering a superior education to the Chinese mainland. Most participants perceived HK as a nationalistic ideoscape, wherein HK people’s pursuit of autonomy is subordinated to the putative Chinese national interests. Moreover, ethnoscape and ideoscape dynamics were found to crisscross other scapes. Generous scholarships (i.e. financescape) provided additional incentives driving student relocations. The persistent consumption of Chinese social media (techno-mediascape) was found to have resulted in worldview conformity between our participants and the Chinese state.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion: Crisscrossing Scapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion: Crisscrossing Scapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crisscrossing scapes in the global flow of elite mainland Chinese students

Woo

2023

High Educ

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“…In addition to nationalist digital vigilantism, other types of social mobilization triggered by nationalism are also rising in China, which is widely discussed in both the public media (Deng & Lin, 2020;Yang, 2019) and academic research (H. Liu, 2019;Luqiu & Kang, 2021;Schneider, 2018;Y. Zhang et al, 2018).…”

Section: Mobilization Of Chinese Digital Nationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Discursive Construction of Populist and Misogynist Nationalism: Digital Vigilantism Against Unpatriotic Intellectual Women in China

Huang

2023

Social Media + Society

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The phenomenon of nationalist digital vigilantism targeting Chinese intellectual women is rising in China. To illustrate how national identities and social exclusion are discursively constructed, as well as the potential vulnerabilities experienced by Chinese female intellectuals, four high-profile cases that took place between 2017 and 2021 are chosen. Critical discourse analysis is conducted on collected Sina Weibo comments, WeChat public account articles, and news articles published by state-run media. The research identifies three main discourses: the ungrateful traitor, the corrupt elite, and the ugly slut. These discursive interactions demonstrate the fluidity of both discursive and operational conditions in nationalist digital vigilantism, which amplifies the targets’ vulnerability. This research contributes to the study of misogynist populist nationalism by providing an empirical analysis in an under-studied social context—China, and to the study of Chinese populist nationalism by foregrounding an under-studied perspective—misogyny.

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“…The 'Diba expedition' is one among many recent manifestations of online Chinese nationalism. Recent discussion has focused on 'techno-nationalism' (Luqiu and Kang, 2021;Plantin and de Seta, 2019), the question of whether nationalism is driven from the top down or from the bottom up (Chen et al, 2019), and the integration of popular nationalism with online popular culture and youth culture (Zhao, 2021), in particular 'fandom nationalism' (Guo and Yang, 2019;Liao et al, 2022;Liu, 2019aLiu, , 2019bWu et al, 2019;Zhuang et al, 2023).…”

Section: Nationalism In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft nationalism and China: A case study of nationalism in short videos by US-Chinese rapper MC Jin

Xiao,

Davis,

Dong

2023

International Journal of Cultural Studies

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In this article we introduce the concept of soft nationalism through a case-study analysis of short videos by US-born rapper MC Jin (Jin Au-Yeung), who is of Chinese background. Jin's creative output, we argue, with its cross-cultural and grassroots invocations of Chinese identity, ethnicity, tradition, language and belonging, complicates existing theories of nationalism. To address these complications we develop the term ‘soft nationalism’, to describe forms of nationalism that are neither ‘hard’, ‘hot’ and bellicose nor ‘banal’ or ‘everyday’. Like soft power, soft nationalism carries intent but speaks quietly, and is practised everywhere but often found in China, in the context of a recent surge of participatory online nationalism.

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Loyalty to WeChat beyond national borders: a perspective of media system dependency theory on techno-nationalism

Cited by 12 publications

References 30 publications

Crisscrossing scapes in the global flow of elite mainland Chinese students

Crisscrossing scapes in the global flow of elite mainland Chinese students

The Discursive Construction of Populist and Misogynist Nationalism: Digital Vigilantism Against Unpatriotic Intellectual Women in China

Soft nationalism and China: A case study of nationalism in short videos by US-Chinese rapper MC Jin

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