The aim of this article collection is to examine Chinese social media technology and culture as a distinctive form of mediated communication and practice. The Internet and social media have grown and become an essential part of the society and economy in China in ways that are increasingly dissimilar from that of the social media platforms outside of China. From the early roll out of the Internet, to the now pervasive presence of social media, Chinese Internet culture continues to reflect the unique interplay of technological changes, language affordances (i.e. Chinese as a character-based script), software development, user-generated interactional practices, and government censorship. Social media platforms and practices provide a rich, yet surprisingly underexplored source for the analysis of new and innovative practices within the distinct context of communication technologies and platforms for nearly one billion users. The papers in this article collection contribute further to examining how the technologies and technological affordances of Chinese social media interact to afford distinctive discursive and linguistic practices across a range of interactional contexts.

In 2006, China surpassed the U.S. to become the country with the world’s greatest number of Internet users (Ju et al., 2019a). Since then, China has continued to innovate and develop new platforms and applications, making social media an integrated part of life in China (Craig et al., 2021, Yang and Wang, 2021). For instance, users can follow news and popular culture on Weibo(also known as Sina Weibo), exchange messages with friends on WeChat, purchase goods on Taobao, pay for purchases with Alipay, read travel and product reviews on Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), follow live streaming broadcasts on Weibo or Lang Live, and post and share short videos on Douyin, Kwai, and Bilibili (e.g. Huang et al., 2020). With multiple functions and features of other digital platforms consolidated into one application, WeChat is described as a ‘super-app’ (Sandel et al., 2019), or an ‘infrastructuralized’ digital platform (Plantin and de Seta, 2019) that dominates Chinese social media. At the heart of the success of WeChat is the decentralization of software development with the potentially limitless expansion of third-party apps and ‘mini programs’ that can be added to the app as well as the centralization of data flows through China’s official accounts. This is evident in the app’s expanding number of functions, ranging from instant messaging in the verbal, audio and visual forms, social networking of ‘Moments’, payments, and travel and ecommerce services. The continually expanding multiple functions of WeChat and the diverse communicative affordances of the platform highlight the transformation and increasing divergence of China’s social media ecology as it evolves within the Great Firewall (see Ju and Sandel, 2018, Ju et al., 2019b, Sandel et al., 2019, Wu and Fitzgerald, 2021b).

While the Internet and digital platforms that first entered China in the 1990s through China’s state-controlled media were seen as ‘drab in tone’ and ‘pompous’ in imagery, this has given way to a vibrant and creative online environment that is now ‘full of humor, play, and irreverence’ (Yang, 2009, p. 14). In more recent years the Chinese state has taken a more active role in monitoring and censoring digital communication (Ju et al., 2019a, Wu, 2018, Wu and Fitzgerald, 2021a), though China’s digital environment continues to be dynamic, shaped by a number of forces and embracing technological changes (e.g. smart phones), software development (e.g. Web 2.0 applications), user-generated interactional practices and the affordances of Chinese as a language to create alternative meanings (Craig et al., 2021, Gong and Yang, 2010). In this environment, while the state monitors digital content, creating boundaries around what it defines to be sensitive political and social topics, app developers and content producers compete to develop marketable and successful products for the vast Chinese audience (Plantin and de Seta, 2019). It is this interplay between these two forces that makes Chinese social media, culture and technology, interesting and distinct from that found in other parts of the world.

Acause of the entwined influences of technology, creativity, commercialization and politics, Chinese social media should be understood as embedded within and a product of the intersections of a unique environment of political, social, economic and technological forms.