Digital Nationalism and Affective Governance: Propaganda, Public Sentiment, and Soft Authoritarianism in China

This book examines how government propaganda and everyday online activity shaped China’s digital nationalism in response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With a focus on Weibo, it demonstrates how state media promoted nationalism and how the public responded by either supporting or quietly challenging official narratives, or reshaping them. Using a variety of methods, including large-scale social media analysis and focused case studies, the book shows how digital platforms became ...