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Abstract
The escalation in geopolitical tensions between China and the United States raises the critical issue of revisiting cyber nationalism in various contexts. A topic of critical inquiry, recent scholarship addresses the changing face of Chinese cyber nationalism since the 2010s, focussing on its connection with fan communities, cosmopolitan visions and the interplay of multifarious stakeholders. However, the ways in which emerging forms of cyber nationalism connect with its predecessors remain to be studied. To explore the historical connections of cyber nationalism across media platforms, this article investigates the role that MIT BBS, one of the most influential forums among overseas Chinese communities, played in organising pro-China protests during the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay. An examination of online political expressions not only unravels the multifaceted dimensions of nationalism, but it also deepens scholarly understanding of discursive activism, which emerged from text-based platforms prior to the dominance of mobile communication applications.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Shaohua Guo
Shaohua Guo is Associate Professor of Chinese at Carleton College. Her research interests focus on contemporary Chinese studies, digital media studies, and cultural studies. She is the author of The Evolution of the Chinese Internet: Creative Visibility in the Digital Public (Stanford University Press, 2020).