The Populism Expression of Chinese Social Media During Coronavirus Pandemic

A Case Study on FangFang’s ‘Wuhan Diary’ Under Her Weibo Account

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210806.060How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Social media, political rhetoric, populism

Abstract

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has broken out for more than one year. It has brought a significant impact on the order of human civilisation. There is an enormous discourse struggling on the Internet in Chinese under the pandemic context. Fang Fang, a Chinese female writer, posts her diary that records the people’s life under the lockdown, which has arisen a controversy. After organising the contents of her diary and analysing the rhetoric of her and netizens, it is discovered that a populist movement is taking place during the pandemic. There is evidence that the aftermath of this vigorous online populist movement will last for a long time. This article will use text analysis method to analyse the Internet speeches, especially the most popular comments. From the interaction between the Fang Fang and ordinary netizens, it can be found that Chinese Internet populism has always existed. As long as it is allowed to be given a specific environment, this momentum can easily be ignited. Due to China’s unique condition, it is difficult to determine whether it will move from online to offline in the future. However, what we can know is that social media can be used as a window to judge Chinese social trends and thoughts. This article is divided into three parts. The first part defines the notion of populism in the Chinese context through literature review. The second part sorts out different speeches on the Chinese Internet and set Fangfang’s ‘Wuhan Diary’ posted on SINA Microblog (Weibo) as a sample. By analysing her rhetoric and the reflections of netizens, we observe the changes in people’s ways of thinking and changes in political concepts behind political discourse in social media. In the third part, this article analyses the role social media playing in this populist movement under the context of the Internet era.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zihao Chen
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/08/09
TI  - The Populism Expression of Chinese Social Media During Coronavirus Pandemic
BT  - Proceedings of the 2021 5th International Seminar on Education, Management and Social Sciences (ISEMSS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 322
EP  - 326
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210806.060
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210806.060
ID  - Chen2021
ER  -