Understanding social issues in a new approach: The role of social media in displacement and resettlement

Abstract

Resettlement provides both challenges and opportunities to people affected. However, mainstream resettlement studies are typically retrospective case-studies. Such studies can provide insights by assessing outcomes and impacts of resettlement but tell little about how resettlees bargain with resettlers. This article explores resettlees timely experiences and diverse behaviours during displacement and resettlement based on the collection and analysis of 287,921 posts on Sina Weibo from 2009 to 2021. Resettlement in Shanghai attracted the greatest attention on Weibo and it consisted of 47% of total extracted posts and the word ‘Shanghai’ is the top-1 high frequency word. By focusing on resettlement in Shanghai, we found ‘resettlement compensation’, and ‘malpractices and violence’ in displacement are the two most popular themes discussed on Weibo. It is hard for resettlees to bargain with developers and local governments due to applied soft and hard coercion strategies. However, unhappiness and dissatisfaction of resettlees are always suppressed and hard to be heard by higher authorities by following formal petitioning process. Cyberspace, especially decentralized social media platforms, becomes a place for resettlees to share their stories, wove collective memories and initiate collective actions through correlating and retweeting posts with similar content, and mentioning web influencers and super topics to attract attention. Future studies of Chinese political dissent would benefit from greater engagement with online dissent on decentralized social media, especially the comments below a post.