This thesis examines the propagation of nationalism in the cybersphere of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) between 2022 and 2023, with a specific focus on nationalistic online key opinion leaders acting in the capacity of “popular propagandists”. By examining their communication activities, I address the overarching research question: “How is cyber nationalism propagated in China by popular propagandists?” This is an important research question, not only because propaganda and nationalism are two important issues in researching China, but also due to the increasing scholarly interest in the topic of Chinese internet. I conceptualize cyber nationalism as “online nationalist narratives in relation to China co/reproduced and disseminated by different actors” and in particular those “mediated through the distinctive practices of digital (sub)cultures.” In order to answer the research question, I construct a theoretical framework based on the concept of “total propaganda” and treat the communication activities of popular propagandists as a process of the co/reproduction and dissemination of nationalist messages involving different communicators. The empirical study establishes a database containing the most influential popular propagandists and a large corpus of online political discussions produced by them based on a seven-month observation of Sina Weibo, the most popular social media platform in China. I use qualitative content analysis to investigate the inter/intra-case and inter/intra-actor variations of propaganda messages from three different political events, which are former US House majority leader Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, China’s anti-lockdown protest against the background of its Covid-19 policy shift and China’s surveillance balloon’s intruding into the US’s airspace.
Weixiang Wang (Sat,) studied this question.