Demobilising and Reorienting Online Emotions: China’s Emotional Governance during the COVID-19 Outbreak

ABSTRACT

This article examines China’s emotional governance by analysing the emotional politics behind the wide circulation of the Fang Fang diaries during the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. By highlighting the flexible and creative reorientation of online emotions in the Chinese state’s governance approach, the article investigates how the diaries’ reverberation of negative feelings – such as grief and indignation – engendered contentious affective publics and amounted to a moment of dissent. The article also explores how the state used multi-layered strategies to demobilise and reorient public sentiment and opinion into regime-supportive nationalism. In doing so, the article offers a more nuanced understanding of state–society relations, online expression and authoritarian resilience in China than interpretations that emphasise suppression and censorship.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Wuhan
• emotional governance
• Fang Fang diaries
• affective publics
• state–society relations
• COVID-19

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Fang explained, for example, that the idea of writing the diaries came from a fellow Chinese writer, whereas the translation was suggested by a friend from the US. She only agreed to the proposal of an English version because her diaries could not be published in China.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Research Base of the Consolidation of Chinese National Community Consciousness, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China [JDGTT202127].