The role of new media in sustaining the status quo: online political expression, nationalism, and system support in China

Abstract

AbstractAs populist nationalism and criticism of government emerge from the Chinese online sphere, the potential influence of public engagement in online communication on Chinese politics has drawn much scholarly and media attention. To illuminate the role of user-generated online communication for political change, this study investigates how online political expression among Chinese Internet users relates to their nationalistic attitudes and support of the status quo. An analysis of survey data demonstrates that online political expression, facilitated by news consumption, enhances support for the existing sociopolitical system both directly and indirectly through nationalism. The results suggest that partial inclusion of the public in the online deliberation process serves to bolster system stability and legitimacy, as the Chinese Communist Party intends.Keywords: news usepolitical communicationsocial changesocial mediasystem justification Notes on contributorsKi Deuk Hyun is an assistant professor in the School of Communications at Grand Valley State University, USA. His research interests include content and effects of news, new media technologies and international communication. [email: kideuk.hyun@gmail.com]Jinhee Kim is an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Pohang University of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea. Her research areas include social and psychological processing of media, media and emotion and cultural differences in mediated communication. [email: jinheekim@ postech.ac.kr]Notes1 The estimate of the proportion of party members is based on CCP official data that reported about 85.13 million CCP members as of 2013 ('China's Communist Party membership', Citation2013) and UN data (United Nations Statistics Division, Citation2014) that break down information about population by age groups in China.2 Of note, other online-survey-based studies reported similar proportions of CCP members in their samples, ranging from about one-fifth (Wu, Citation2006) to one-fourth of the respondents being CCP members (Hyun et al., Citation2014).Additional informationFundingThis research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning), Korea, under the 'IT Consilience Creative Program' (NIPA-2014-H0201-14-1001) supervised by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency).