Relay activism and the flows of contentious publicness on WeChat: a case study of COVID-19 in China

Sun, Y. and Wright, S. (2023) Relay activism and the flows of contentious publicness on WeChat: a case study of COVID-19 in China. Information, Communication and Society, (Early Online Publication)

Abstract

This paper explores a case of public contention against the censoring of a feature article about a COVID-19 whistleblower on the Chinese social media, WeChat. Moving beyond the normative theory of the public sphere and publics, we draw on Kavada and Poell's theory of ‘contentious publicness’ which is flexible enough to capture the complexity, diversity and hybridity of digital contention in the context of China. Through a combination of textual analysis and participatory observation, this article analyses how citizens challenged the censorship system and attempted to keep Dr Fen's story online through what we call ‘relay activism’. Informed by the three dimensions of ‘contentious publicness’, we analyse the materiality of the communication infrastructure of WeChat and the temporal and spatial relations of the public contention (focusing primarily on WeChat and GitHub). In doing this, the paper contributes a more comprehensive approach to examining the social, structural and participatory characteristics of the contestation of censorship in China.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: The research was supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project when first author was employed at Zhejiang University [grant number 22NDJC045YB].
• Status: Early Online Publication
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Sun, Dr Yu
• Authors: Sun, Y., and Wright, S.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Information, Communication and Society
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1369-118X
• ISSN (Online): 1468-4462
• Published Online: 24 May 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
• First Published: First published in Information, Communication and Society 2023
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher