“Occupying” the Internet: State media and the reinvention of official culture online

The second decade of the new millennium in China has witnessed official media’s high-profile endeavors to “occupy” online sphere. Existing scholarship has examined, for instance, how the government at both the central and local levels assumes an increasingly proactive role in experimenting with new modes of e-governance. However, little critical attention has been paid to the reinvention of official culture that aims at having a stronger voice online, already a dynamic space occupied by numerous players competing for user attention and market share. This article fills this gap in literature and engages in a close reading of the Leon Dai incident in 2016. A renowned Taiwanese actor and director, Leon Dai’s role in Zhao Wei’s film No Other Love was replaced on July 15, 2016 because of his alleged ideological support of Taiwanese independence. The state media, as represented by the Weibo account of the Communist Youth League of China, played a crucial role in arousing nationalistic sentiments among Internet users and mobilizing collective actions online. Drawing on discourse analysis and online ethnographic work, I argue that official media’s appropriation of fan culture and capitalization on digital populism are some of the key strategies to approach patriotic netizens. In so doing, state media sectors not only experiment with online media logic that focuses on attracting and sustaining user attention, thereby cultivating their own fan base, they also foster an alliance between the nation and its citizens