Discursive channeling: evidence from newspaper responses to anti-waste incineration protests in China

Discourse is a critical tool for authoritarian states to control social protests. The literature highlights a hostility–sympathy dichotomy in official discourse, viewing official discourse as either repressing or facilitating protests. In this paper, we propose a more nuanced framework by introducing the concept of discursive channeling. Apart from facilitating protests, official sympathetic discourse can also be used to channel protests—redirecting radical claims into more moderate ones. Drawing on newspapers’ responses to anti-waste incineration protests in China from 2002 to 2021, we identify the early 2010s as a watershed moment. While hostile discourse declined, sympathetic discourse surged—however, its content fundamentally changed. While pre-2010 sympathetic discourse recognized the major claim concerning decision-making on the siting of waste incineration plants, post-2010 sympathetic discourse redirected the focus toward a minor and more moderate claim concerning environmental monitoring and compensation. As a form of indirect repression, this discursive channeling elucidates how authoritarian states mitigate the upward-scale shift in protests and why repression intensified in Xi Jinping’s era without backfiring.