The Contentiousness of the Chinese Online Sphere: Mapping the Trajectory and Dynamics

The Chinese online sphere has been described as "contentious" due to the presence of both official and alternative voices and discourses. However, the feature of contentiousness has often been explored as a static rather than a dynamic status. How do public discussions—and thereby the contentiousness—unfold online? Who is shaping the political agenda in the Chinese online sphere, and with what effect? We study these questions by examining the connections between different agendas/themes across various types of Weibo users during the Red-Yellow-Blue kindergarten child abuse scandal. Specifically, we develop a computational method with time series analysis approach to explore the relationship between the contentiousness of topics, frames, and agendas. Our methodological proposal could shed light on how to better map out the dynamics and complexity of contentiousness in the Chinese online sphere.

Dr Jun Liu is an award-winning scholar and Associate Professor at the Center for Tracking and Society and the Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is vice-chair of the European Communication Research and Education Association's Communication and Democracy Section and a research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society, University of Pennsylvania. His research areas cover political communication, political sociology, and comparative and computational social science, with publications on digital technologies and activism in the fields of communication, sociology, political science, and computer science. He has won awards from the American Political Science Association and the International Communication Association. His monograph "Shifting Dynamics of Contention in the Digital Age" is published by Oxford University Press. One of his ongoing research projects is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark on comparative studies of political contention and digital technologies (https://tech-in-movement.ku.dk/).