Purged out of Chinese Internet: An Oral History of Individuals Who Experienced “Digital Death” on Social Media

Caiwei Chen

As social media platforms become increasingly important sites for civic engagement and creative expression in China, the Chinese government cracks down on social media with a comprehensive, stringent, and sophisticated set of censorship tactics to curb political discussions deemed undesirable, with an increasing focus on shutting down individuals who are vocal on sensitive matters. Outspoken public opinion leaders, who serve as the “non-party” thought leaders, with their crucial role in information dissemination and ability to sway the public, thus become the foremost subject of user- targeted censorship: account suspension and the subsequent deplatformization.

Deplatformization, usually referred to on Chinese web as “account bombing” (zha hao), is the act of an online platform that systemically denies a user the infrastructural services needed to function within its ecosystem. Through oral history interviews of 6 Chinese public opinion leaders across platforms, this study seeks to understand the implications of account suspension and deplatformization for those individuals — what kind of emotional and behavioral response censorship evoked, how it shaped these users’ affective relationship with social media, and the reflexivity and agency they exhibit engaging in public discourse.