Playful, coded, and emotional language: Discursive strategies of online criticism on Chinese social media

Language has always been essential in collective actions. Because offline collective actions are highly controlled in China, Chinese people often resort to online criticism, which heavily relies on the creative use of language to circumvent the government’s control of public communication. This study collects and analyzes the data of the #JiangshanjiaoandHongqiman# public discourse on Weibo to investigate the discursive characteristics of Chinese people’s online expressions. In February 2020, a mass organization of the government launched two official virtual idols on Weibo, one of the most widely used social media platforms in China. Amidst widespread discontent with the management of the pandemic, this intervention in fandom culture triggered a backlash among the Chinese Internet users. This study shows that the Chinese netizens expressed criticism through coded, playful, and emotional language. This article contributes to the literature on discursive strategies of online public discourse in China.