ABSTRACT This study examines how Vietnamese journalists' perceptions of online surveillance are related to fear of reprisal and self-censorship. Using a cross-sectional online survey of 588 working journalists, we tested the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modeling with bootstrapped indirect effects. The results indicate that perceived online surveillance positively predicts fear of reprisal and journalistic self-censorship, and that fear of reprisal partially mediates this relationship. Additional analyses show higher self-censorship among journalists with greater seniority and more experience. These findings suggest that perceived monitoring can generate anticipatory restraint both directly and via fear-based pathways in tightly regulated media environments. From a theoretical perspective, the findings reveal that the fear-based silencing mechanism at the core of the Spiral of Silence theory (SOS), whereby anticipated negative consequences suppress expressive behavior, operates in a structurally analogous manner among journalists confronting state surveillance. We position our contribution as a contextual extension of the SOS mechanism to an authoritarian journalism setting, rather than a full replication of the model. This study contributes to the literature by specifying fear of reprisal as a measurable mechanism and situating it within broader debates on constrained expression in contemporary media systems.

ABSTRACT Taiwanese women negotiate menstrual tracking apps at the intersection of algorithmic systems, cultural expectations, and embodied experiences. This study harnessed qualitative digital methods combining diary studies and in-depth interviews with sixteen participants to develop intimate data performativity as a conceptual lens. Three interconnected dimensions emerged. First, algorithmic negotiation in embodied knowledge production: users embrace predictive systems while maintaining interpretive agency. Second, integration of tracking into self-optimization practices exposes contradictory dynamics of empowerment and control. Third, data sharing reconfigures intimate relationships as menstrual apps mediate gendered dynamics of care and surveillance. Women actively co-constitute bodily knowledge, regulatory norms, and relationship dynamics through everyday engagement with menstrual tracking technologies. These performative practices exceed binary frameworks of empowerment or discipline.

ABSTRACT This article examines how the news audience in an autocratizing society judges the efficacy of the news media to carry out its normative roles and functions. When a society undergoes autocratization, the news media are subjected to increasing political control and may frequently self-censor. Unwillingness to report on sensitive information and viewpoints can limit the media’s ability to facilitate deliberation and inform the public. However, citizens with different political values and attitudes may understand self-censorship differently, leading to varying relationships between perceived media self-censorship and perceived news efficacy. Analysis of survey data from Hong Kong shows that perceived media self-censorship leads to lower levels of perceived news efficacy only among people with low levels of political trust and weak beliefs in law and order. For people who trust the political system and value law and order, perceived media self-censorship relates positively to perceived news efficacy. General theoretical implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT This study tests a moderated sequential mediation model to offer evidence for a theoretically derived hypothesis that exclusive use of domestic media (parochialism) in China leads to support of internet censorship, while the opposite is true for avid consumption of non-domestic media (cosmopolitanism). The hypothesized relationships have three distinct and yet interlapping intellectual roots: (1) authoritarian orientation; (2) institutional trust; and (3) need for cognition. Using the 2020 data from the Chinese Internet Users’ Social Awareness Survey of 1,840 Chinese netizens, we found empirical support for all hypotheses. Specifically, the connection between media use and censorship support is sequentially mediated by authoritarian orientation and institutional trust regardless of use patterns. In the process, need for cognition conditions these indirect effects in opposite directions: among parochial users, higher need for cognition strengthens the indirect pro-censorship pathway, while among cosmopolitan users, it bolsters the pathway toward reduced censorship support. These findings show that deeper cognitive engagement does not have a uniformly liberalizing role; instead, it magnifies the downstream consequences of the information environment to which individuals are habitually exposed.

ABSTRACT Since 2017, China and Vietnam have intensified cybersecurity regulation, raising concerns about state surveillance and restrictions on online expression. While both governments justify these measures through narratives of national security and cyber sovereignty, their communication strategies differ significantly. This study compares how cybersecurity is articulated and legitimized in Chinese and Vietnamese state media, focusing on the communicative construction of digital authoritarianism. Using a mixed-methods approach combining Discourse Network Analysis, topic modeling, and corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis, the study examines actor coalitions, dominant themes, and framing strategies in official media discourse. The findings reveal distinct models of digital governance. China's discourse emphasizes data security, digital economic development, and technological leadership, framing cybersecurity as part of national modernization and global influence. In contrast, Vietnam's discourse portrays cyberspace primarily as a threat to political stability and social order, prioritizing domestic control and regime security. These differences reflect two communicative logics of digital authoritarianism: one oriented toward global competitiveness and economic legitimacy, and the other toward internal securitization and political survival. The study contributes to scholarship on authoritarian resilience and demonstrates how state media narratives legitimize divergent models of internet governance in contemporary authoritarian contexts.

ABSTRACT This study examines the intersection of gender, fandom, and nationalism within contexts of digital authoritarianism. With a focus on a female-led nationalist movement, this study explores the operational mechanisms of digital authoritarianism through the subjective experiences and digital practices of social actors, utilizing actor-network theory and gender performativity as analytical lenses. The study employs participant observations and semi-structured interviews to investigate a meme war – the 930 Online Expedition. In doing so, it highlights how diverse actors, including ‘fanquan girls’ (young female fans), cyber-nationalist communities, and digital platforms, negotiate and align their interests to form cohesive networks in support of pro-China narratives, illustrating the phases of problematization, interessement, enrollment, and mobilization. It advances scholarship on digital authoritarianism by theorizing ‘governance through non-action’ as a feminized, networked process. It shows how fanquan girls’ gendered fandom practices diffuse control through sociotechnical infrastructures, connect micro-level participation to macro-level nationalist mobilization, and foreground ordinary netizens’ lived experiences in co-producing authoritarian resilience beyond overt repression and surveillance.

ABSTRACT This study examines how recalling product-harm crises generates spillover from corporate failures to domestic publics’ country identity at both the micro level (product-based perceptions) and the macro level (general perceptions of national strength and development). Drawing on the accessibility–diagnosticity framework, crisis spillover is conceptualized as a conditional process in which recalled crisis information shapes national judgments when it is cognitively accessible and perceived as informative. Using data from an online survey in China (N = 596), the results show that crisis recall is negatively associated with both micro- and macro-level country identity, indicating domestic vertical spillover. Social media engagement strengthens these negative associations, while political cynicism amplifies spillover only for macro-level country identity. In contrast, collective efficacy mitigates spillover for both dimensions. By shifting attention from country image to country identity and identifying conditions that intensify or attenuate recall-based spillover, this study offers a more conditional and internally oriented understanding of crisis spillover dynamics.