Discursive practices of blame during the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese Weibo

Ying Jin*, Dennis Tay

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The participatory affordance of web platforms has encouraged ordinary users’ participation in sociopolitical issues and opened up new channels for public opinion expression, particularly to blame authorities for their perceived wrongdoings. The current critical discourse analysis study contributes to this scholarship by investigating bottom-up discursive practices on user-generated texts on Weibo, the most widely used social media website in China. Using Social Media Critical Discourse Studies, we examine how netizens blame the elite group for their money and mask donations during the COVID-19 pandemic. They do this by constructing an identity for the elites as norm-breaching, outliers, and criminals, in contrast to their own norm-monitoring and judicial identity, thereby justifying the blame on the elites. Several discursive practices were identified with varying degrees of rationality and affectivity. Data includes comments presented in both textual and image forms.

Original languageEnglish
Article number100895
JournalDiscourse, Context and Media
Volume66
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2025
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Cultural Studies
  • Communication

Keywords

  • Blame practices
  • Red Cross Foundation
  • Social media critical discourse analysis
  • Weibo

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