Raising and Lowering Awareness in the Digital Space

Abstract Since the wave of repressions targeting primarily Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region ( XUAR ), minorities in danger resorted to various online platforms in order to increase awareness about the situation they face and to archive available evidence for future use. Thus, the narrative was created that portrays ill-treatment, forced assimilation, unlawful detention, and cultural erasure. Most Muslims and activists started using the online video platforms of Douyin, which is native to China, and TikTok, its international equivalent, to share videos aimed at domestic and international audiences. These videos vary in production quality and messages, but almost all of them are designed to mobilize viewers to learn more about the human rights crisis in the XUAR and take action. Similarly, Chinese officials started using Douyin and TikTok to create counternarratives via their own videos. Videos by Chinese authorities (e.g., local police departments in Xinjiang) or by China-sponsored content creators depict Muslims enjoying their culture, language, and religion, and the region is often shown as peaceful and rapidly developing, thanks to the efforts of the Chinese government. This article aims to look at examples of Douyin and TikTok videos by both Muslims and human rights activists and pro- CCP (Chinese Communist Party) content creators through the lenses of multimodal discourse analysis to identify potential trends and shared approaches. The theoretical framework includes digital activism, oppositional media resource mobilization, and surveillance studies, focusing on how digital activism emerges as a response to digital repression. The article concludes with findings of how video content by pro-Muslim minority and pro- CCP creators battle on the online spaces of Douyin and TikTok for a dominant narrative, which can be categorized as reactive and proactive measures against state (digital) repression.