Mob censorship in China: ChiRenxueMantou , digital press criticism, and journalists’ failed jurisdiction

Despite its global prominence, Chinese digital press criticism remains understudied. In the wake of the controversial coverage of the China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 crash, the vernacular rhetoric “ChiRenxueMantou” (eating blood-soaked buns) crystallized as a moral challenge to journalism’s professional jurisdiction. By extending professional jurisdiction theory with a moral–affective dimension, this article frames China’s “ChiRenxueMantou” discourse as a contest over journalism’s moral–affective jurisdiction and examines the conflict between epistemic and moral–affective claims. We employ discourse and semantic network analyses to examine how ChiRenxueMantou operates as a multi-layered critique—assessing professional norms, attributing moral blame, and fueling mob-style censorship. Journalistic defenses combined organizational silence with four individual strategies: disclosing news-making processes, explaining editorial considerations, recalling classic reports, and countering malicious criticisms. However, these epistemic claims grounded in professional criteria failed to counter criticism and attacks driven by moral affective judgments. In China’s turbulent digital media environment, journalistic jurisdiction proves conditionally permeable, shaped by an intertwined state–platform–public nexus whose dynamics are still underexplored. The implications of mob-style digital press criticism for Chinese journalism are discussed.