Falsehoods, Fandom, and Frictions: Digital Politics in East Asia

HUM: Global Flagship Initiative “Alternative Platforms, Alternative Politics” workshop.

This workshop examines how digital politics in East Asia is shaped through the intertwined dynamics of falsehoods, fandom, and frictions. Bringing together studies on China’s short-video platforms, intergroup conspiracy theories in Japan, fandom nationalism, rural influencers, and platformed authoritarianism, the workshop explores how misinformation, nationalist affect, influencer cultures, and state–platform relations are produced, circulated, and contested in contemporary media environments. In doing so, it speaks directly to the Flagship Initiative “Alternative Platforms, Alternative Politics” by foregrounding platformed spaces, actors, and practices that exceed the familiar focus on dominant Western corporate platforms.

The workshop highlights how alternative or regionally specific platform ecologies generate distinct forms of engagement, influence, governance, and political contestation, while also revealing the tensions between state authority, commercial logics, platform infrastructures, and user participation.

Abstracts and bios

 

Populist conspiracy theories often target specific outgroups, as a common trope in these narratives is the construction of an external threat, accompanied by accusations that domestic elites are siding with foreign aggressors. Intergroup threat theory research has shown that exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories targeting an outgroup increases ingroup prejudice towards the targeted group. In some cases, these effects may even spill over to other, unrelated outgroups. This study focuses on the discourse and effects of intergroup conspiratorial narratives in Japan, which have been on the rise in both mainstream and alternative media in recent years. First, it identifies how external threats are constructed in these narratives across different media. Second, using data from a survey experiment conducted in 2026, it examines the effects of exposure to these narratives on prejudicial attitudes towards outgroups.

About John W. Cheng

John W. Cheng is an Associate Professor at the School of International Politics, Economics and Communication at Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan. He received his PhD in International Studies from Waseda University, specialising in media studies and social psychology. His research focuses on the social effects of ICT and media information in times of disaster and crisis; it also addresses information challenges in today's digital society, including the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories. He currently serves as a board member of the International Telecommunications Society (ITS) and a fellow of the Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association (JBA).

 

 

This talk is based on the book "Fandom Nationalism: Participatory Censorship and Performative Patriotism in East Asia", which delves into the unexpected collision of pop culture and political identity across East Asia, primarily in China. Qian will introduce the core conceptualization—"participatory censorship" and "performative patriotism"—demonstrating how fan devotion and anti-fan hatred are weaponized with nationalist fervor to enforce political boundaries. The discussion will draw upon an in-depth case study (such as the Zhang Zhehan case) to highlight the mechanics of this digital warfare and its role in the "cancellation" of top celebrities. The session will expand into a broader discussion about fandom and nationalism across the region, examining how fan communities navigate institutional scrutiny and power structures.

About Qian Huang

Dr Qian Huang is an assistant professor of digital cultures at University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She is the PI of a 4-year (2026-2029) project funded by NWO (The Dutch Research Council) Veni Talent Scheme, "Negotiating Digital Visibility: Public Intellectuals' Cautious Labor." She has published widely in peer-reviewed journals on digital visibility, fandom, and nationalism in China. She has co-authored the books Digital Media, Denunciation and Shaming (2025) and Fandom Nationalism (2026), and co-edited special issues for several media and cultural studies journals. Currently, she is the associate editor for two journals: Creator and Influencer Studies and Communication and The Public.

 

 

Videos depicting life in the Chinese countryside have become one of the most popular genres on Chinese social media, and a growing number of rural content creators have attained influencer status. Their popularity has also attracted increasing attention from state actors, making rural influencers a revealing case for understanding the evolving relationship between the state, platforms, and digital creators in contemporary China. Drawing on a case study of the Douyin programme Rural Guardians, this talk explores both state strategies of control and the ways influencers adapt to growing state involvement. Through an analysis of the programme’s videos over time, it shows that state efforts to harness influencers for political mobilisation can initially be effective. However, the coexistence of political objectives and the commercial logic of social media generates tensions that complicate state control and raises broader questions about the future of digital propaganda in China. 

About Elena Meyer-Clement

Elena Meyer-Clement is Associate Professor at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (ToRS), University of Copenhagen. Her research examines authoritarian governance, state–society relations, and political communication in contemporary China. She has published widely on local governance, rural development, and urbanisation in China. Her book Party Hegemony and Entrepreneurial Power in China: Institutional Change in the Film and Music Industries (Routledge, 2016) investigates the relationship between private cultural producers and the state, and her recent work examines social media platforms and the interaction between political and commercial logics in China’s digital sphere.

 

 

China’s short-video platforms (e.g., Douyin and Kuaishou), with over a billion users and high daily engagement, have emerged as a primary source of information for Chinese netizens. These platforms’ low barriers to content creation, along with the trust users place in visual media, have made them fertile ground for falsehoods. These falsehoods deceive users through rational or emotional appeals: rational appeals leverage fabricated expertise on public-interest topics, and emotional appeals exploit staged personal tragedies or family and social conflicts. Such content could mislead public understanding of critical issues and undermine social trust.

The Chinese government has implemented strict laws against falsehoods and launched enforcement actions and campaigns. Platforms have also introduced fact-checking accounts and content moderation features. However, these countermeasures continue to face persistent challenges, including the digital divide, the sheer volume of content, AI-generated deepfakes, engagement-driven algorithms, and the inherent conflict of interest in platforms acting simultaneously as content regulators and profit-sharing intermediaries. The presentation also outlines enhanced regulatory clarity, technological integration, and public education as keyways forward.

About Xue Zhang

Dr Xue Zhang is a Research Fellow and Principal Investigator at the Centre of Excellence for National Security, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. She also serves as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI), NTU. Her research interests include information management, environmental scanning, information literacy, and counter-misinformation and disinformation measures. Her work has been published in Health Communication, Journal of Information Science, Information Research, The Diplomat, and Channel News Asia, among others. She has also been invited to serve as a reviewer for a range of academic journals, including Information, Communication & Society, Health Communication, and California Management Review. Dr Zhang obtained her PhD from WKWSCI, NTU.

 

 

Digital authoritarianism is commonly framed as the state-led use of digital technologies for surveillance, repression, and manipulation, particularly in authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia. This study challenges regime-centered understandings by reconceptualizing digital authoritarianism as a performative and relational process emerging through interactions among state discourse, platform architectures, and public participation. Drawing on governmentality and political theory, it examines how authority is enacted through digitally structured environments rather than imposed solely through coercion. Using China as a theoretically revealing case, the study analyzes 82,034 Weibo posts concerning Japanese politician Sanae Takaichi during a period of geopolitical tension. Combining topic modelling, temporal analysis, semantic network analysis, and MRQAP, the findings reveal a heterogeneous and polyvocal communicative environment in which user narratives often emerge independently of state discourse. Rather than simple top-down control, digital authoritarianism operates through environmental conditioning that shapes visibility, plausibility, and interpretive authority within platformed infrastructures.

About Dechun Zhang and Jun Liu

Dr. Dechun Zhang is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen and affiliated China expert at the Leiden Asia Centre, Leiden University. Trained in political communication, journalism, and media studies, his research examines media, politics, and digital technologies through qualitative, quantitative, and computational methods. He has published extensively on digital nationalism and platform governance, including the monograph Digital Nationalism and Affective Governance (Routledge, 2026). His current ERC-funded research explores the intersections of IoT technologies, environmental monitoring, and social surveillance across Europe, China, and the United States.

Jun Liu is Associate Professor at the Center for Tracking and Society, University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on political sociology and political communication, with publications spanning sociology, political science, communication studies, and data science. His forthcoming monograph, Technology in Movements, will be published by Oxford University Press.