Complaining and sharing personal concerns as political acts: how everyday talk about childcare and parenting on online forums increases public deliberation and civic engagement in China

ABSTRACT

Based on a comparative content analysis of political talk in three popular Chinese online forums (government-run, commercial-lifestyle, and commercial-topical), this paper investigates how the private and public spheres are connected thru everyday talk about childcare concerns. Compared to the government-run (party-state) forum, the nonpolitical (lifestyle and topical) forums created open and inclusive ‘third spaces’ for citizens to engage in child welfare politics. In such spaces, the reason, rule-based deliberation was not the dominant communicative practice. Rather, political (narrative) acts of complaining and sharing personal concerns – grounded in citizens’ life experiences – were the norm, capturing and recognizing public problems in the private sphere. We argue that to understand the nature of political talk in Chinese third spaces, communicative acts that have not been considered central to deliberative reasoning, such as complaining and sharing personal concerns should be given more normative importance.

KEYWORDS:

• Online deliberation
• everyday political talk
• third spaces
• the public sphere
• China

Notes

1. For more detail on the coding scheme, see Sun et al., (2020)

Additional information

Funding

FundingNational Social Science Fund of China (Grant No.19AXW007). China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project (Grant No. 527000-X91901).

Notes on contributors

Yu Sun

Yu Sun works as an assistant professor at College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University, China. Her research interests involve: everyday political talk, Chinese internet, online public sphere, data activism, and digital platforms and infrastructure.

Todd Graham

Todd Graham is a University Academic Fellow in Political Communication and Journalism at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds. Email: [email protected]

Marcel Broersma

Marcel Broersma is a professor of Media and Journalism Studies and the director of the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen. Email: [email protected]