During the years 2014–2016 I led a research project with a small grant from my institution on how Uyghurs were using the Uyghur internet to express cultural resilience and political resistance. This was a period in which the internet in the Uyghur homeland was highly monitored, but there was still some limited flexibility to express ideas within certain parameters. As part of the project, the research team monitored discussion threads from four popular Uyghur websites, founded and run by Uyghur webmasters. In this brief paper I will re-examine a small selection of these discussion threads within the context of the changing political climate in the Uyghur homeland during that period, and the on-going challenges for the Uyghur community to keep their culture alive.
Rebecca Clothey (Thu,) studied this question.