Research

How are social movements that address democratic states’ wrongdoings and violence perceived and discussed by the publics under authoritarian regimes? This significant topic engages in dialogue in three key areas of social movement research—discourses, globalization, and authoritarianism. We address this topic by studying the discourses of the Black Lives Matter movement in four Chinese-speaking publics through an analysis of 1,911 reports and posts from traditional and social media. The discourses vary within and across the publics in complex and surprising ways. The diverse discourses, however, share two patterns: (1) a strong preference for stability, often expressed through exaggerating violence in the protests and using negative historical analogies to the Cultural Revolution; and (2) a popular racism, represented in the racially biased image of “uncivil Blacks.” The variations and commonality can be explained by the interactions between the authoritarian Chinese state’s different modes of involvement—restriction and intervention—and the diverse global experiences of discourse participants. The interactions enact and amplify certain elements of authoritarian political culture in the participants’ horizons of interpretation. This study paves the way for a more systematic research agenda on public discourses of social movements situated at the intersection of democracy and authoritarianism.

How do ordinary people in authoritarian states interpret nationalist messages in everyday life? While research has shown how nationalism is reproduced through routine practices, less is known about how audiences interpret, adapt to, or resist official messages—and why. This study examines China’s entertainment industry, where the state co-opts celebrities to amplify nationalism and audiences interpret these performances to draw boundaries of national belonging. Using a national survey of Chinese citizens (N=2,211), I show that nationalism is a salient criterion in public evaluations of celebrity image. Drawing on 55 in-depth interviews, I develop a typology of audience orientations toward celebrity nationalism shaped by two key factors: individuals’ media repertoires and lived experience of exclusion from the national community. These orientations reveal that popular nationalism persists not only through internalized conviction but also by strategies such as pragmatic compliance, resignation, and subtle dissent. By highlighting how people’s routine engagement with celebrity culture normalizes nationalist cues in everyday life, the study explains how nationalism endures even when ideological commitment is weak. Grounded in the Chinese case, the findings advance debates on cultural governance, propaganda reception, and symbolic boundary-making in authoritarian contexts.