The Chinese Internet has developed rapidly in the past decade and given rise to many online phenomena, including digital vigilantism (DV). It refers to citizens' practice of weaponising online visibility for retaliation when collectively offended. In China, since the Cat Torture Case in 2006, DV has been widely adopted by citizens to defend social norms and values. With recent technological developments and socio-political changes in China, how Chinese citizens conduct DV and its influence have also changed along various dimensions. This research, therefore, identifies the historical changes of DV in China and situates these changes in relation to contemporary Chinese technological and socio-political development. The study constructs a database of 1265 Chinese DV cases that receive media coverage between 2006 to 2018 and conducts a thematic analysis to identify characteristics, changes, and trends of DV in China. The author argues that these developments demonstrate the mediation and more importantly, the mediatisation of justice-seeking on the Chinese Internet conditioned by the ubiquitous state power.

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The phenomenon of nationalist digital vigilantism targeting Chinese intellectual women is rising in China. To illustrate how national identities and social exclusion are discursively constructed, as well as the potential vulnerabilities experienced by Chinese female intellectuals, four high-profile cases that took place between 2017 and 2021 are chosen. Critical discourse analysis is conducted on collected Sina Weibo comments, WeChat public account articles, and news articles published by state-run media. The research identifies three main discourses: the ungrateful traitor, the corrupt elite, and the ugly slut. These discursive interactions demonstrate the fluidity of both discursive and operational conditions in nationalist digital vigilantism, which amplifies the targets’ vulnerability. This research contributes to the study of misogynist populist nationalism by providing an empirical analysis in an under-studied social context—China, and to the study of Chinese populist nationalism by foregrounding an under-studied perspective—misogyny.

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