Imported Nationalism: How Foreign Influencers and Local Followers Amplify the Chinese Dream in Weibo’s Attention Economy

Original

Imported Nationalism: How Foreign Influencers and Local Followers Amplify the Chinese Dream in Weibo’s Attention Economy

Saif Shahin, Jing Cai

Abstract

This study turns attention to the emergence of foreign influencers who have gained a strong following on China’s digital platforms by promoting Chinese nationalism to a domestic audience. Drawing on data collected in 2020–2021, it sheds light on how the sociotechnical affordances of a platform like Weibo enable the discursive construction of nationalism in the posts of foreign influencers and its amplification through the comments of their Chinese followers. While tracing the digital discourses back to China’s long history of tumultuous relations with the West, the research elucidates how the country’s neoliberal attention economy incentivizes the production of ‘user-generated nationalism’. It argues that nationalist discourses, by evaluating China’s achievements in comparison with the West, rationalize and reinforce the Communist Party’s control over Chinese politics and society.