Mobile Activism and Contentious Politics in Contemporary China

Abstract

The past decade has seen an increasingly use of the mobile phone as a facilitator for protests in liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes. Yet, to date how the use of mobile phones affects participation in protests remains largely unclear and under-theorized. To fill this gap, this study employs the distinction between communication and metacommunication to investigate the informational and relational dimensions of the mobile phone in protest mobilization in four cases in rural and urban China. By drawing upon 53 in-depth interviews, the result reveals that, in addition to communicating mobilizing information, participators metacommunicate their mutual relationships via mobile phones in mobilization process, which greatly shape both the practice of information exchange and the perception and interpretation of information. Such kind of metacommunication acts as the pivotal driving force for mobilization and participation in protests as it involves an engagement of reciprocal relationship, generates a sense of mutual engagement, and enhances a feeling of solidarity. This study concludes that the dynamic of the mobile phone as a facilitator in popular protest lies in its embedding of metacommunication beyond information dissemination.