Fan Engagement with Chinese Celebrities’ Political Signaling on Weibo

As political control tightens, many Chinese celebrities have started to repost official messages on Weibo to signal political loyalty. What is the impact of celebrities' dissemination of official messages on public discourse? Using novel data, this article finds that, for reposted official messages, younger celebrities receive more fan engagement while celebrities with more followers receive less fan engagement than their other non-political personal lifestyle posts. Furthermore, fan engagement is higher for anti-foreign intervention reposts concerning sovereignty and territorial integrity than for other reposted official messages. The findings suggest that the majority of Chinese fans on Weibo are not blind cheerleaders of the government. Instead, they selectively engage with celebrities' political reposts of official messages. However, the fans that are avid government supporters can still dominate the online discourse. Second, the findings also suggest that younger celebrities serve as examples for citizens to emulate regarding how to engage with politics by echoing official messages. Overall, this article presents a more complicated picture of Chinese celebrities' and fans' online political behaviors and their impacts.