The mediated and mediatised justice-seeking: Chinese digital vigilantism from 2006 to 2018

Abstract

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.

Let's report our rivals: how Chinese fandoms game content moderation to restrain opposing voices

“…By promoting the "official version of morality or ethics," the state can encourage self-purification and self-discipline to strengthen the legitimacy of the state in a populist way. Huang (2021) has shown a tendency of increasing online reporting cases in Chinese cyberspace, and the social media site, Weibo, has become the most commonly used platform for reporting. The switch of reporting arena from state-backed institutions to commercial platforms suggests a need for more studies on spontaneous online mass reporting that are not directly promoted by the state.…”

Whose agenda is it anyway: an exploration of cancel culture and political affiliation in the United States

“…Some of this hate can fall under the umbrella of 'digital vigilantism', where ordinary netizens take to social media in order to "name and shame" (Dunsby and Howes 2019, p. 41) real or perceived offenders (Trottier 2020). This vigilantism can be performed by organized groups or individuals (Favarel-Garrigues et al 2020) and has the goal of establishing justice when people feel that the authorities have failed to do so (Huang 2021;Loveluck 2020;Tanner and Campana 2019). Although the content of their message is hateful, expressing anger or fear toward a person or persons, digital vigilantes believe they have the moral high ground (Chiou 2020;Favarel-Garrigues et al 2020).…”

“…Unlike digital vigilantism, however, which can involve a single vigilante or a mob (Udupa et al 2020), one cannot cancel alone; evidence would suggest it takes a mob to cancel or deplatform a public figure (Beer 2020;Bluestone 2017;Dodgson 2020;Frazer-Carroll 2020). In addition, while digital vigilantism is associated with bypassing censorship by making private information public (Huang 2021;Trottier 2020), cancel culture is actually seen as a form of contemporary censorship (Tufekci 2018) coming from social networks (Herzog 2018). Digital vigilantism adds to a person's public digital profile, while cancel culture harnesses what already exists in the digital public space and uses it to remove the person entirely (see Waisbord 2020 for a full discussion of digital publicity).…”

“…This can be seen in digital vigilantism escalating into the mob-like cancel culture: seeking the removal of human beings or ideas from cyberspace (e.g., Rogers 2020) instead of the proportionate punishment of a person or warning others of the dangers of a perceived criminal (e.g., Dunsby and Howes 2019). Because of the anonymity of the internet and the lack of real-world consequences for online actions, people seem to feel equally empowered to express both normative and dissenting viewpoints (Dunsby and Howes 2019;Huang 2021;Loveluck 2020). Despite the small number of voices-both trolls and vigilantes (Kumar et al 2018)-they represent the symbiotic extremes of internet culture, and media would suggest that they are impacting people offline (Dodgson 2020;Dozier 2018).…”

“…This is beyond the scope of the present work, but studies performing global analyses on cancel culture in politics should take these alternative politicians into account as well. This study also specifically targeted the United States because of its particularly polarized two-party political system (Hetherington and Weiler 2009), but cancel culture exists all around the world (e.g., Huang 2021;Italie 2020;Mortimer 2020;Sonder 2019;Udupa et al 2020), including in countries without two-party political systems. Future work should examine cancel culture in these other cultural contexts to see which variables hold up as predictors and which do not function outside of the United States context.…”