Inhabitants of a National “Walled Garden”: Everyday Digital Nationalism in China

Digital media have played a significant role in the rise of nationalism in recent years. Existing research, however, tends to focus on more explicit or passionate expressions of nationalist feelings online. In contrast, there has been very little work on the relationship between everyday digital practices and the (re)production of national frameworks among “ordinary” citizens. To address this lacuna, this study develops a novel theoretical framework that employs insights from studies of everyday habits, temporal rhythms and “common-sense” knowledge. This framework is used to examine the everyday digital practices of ordinary people in China drawing on data from media diaries and semi-structured interviews with 45 participants. The Chinese digital infrastructure is particularly conducive to the formation of distinct national digital habits, due to its reliance on domestic platforms and the presence of the “Great Firewall” that limits access to foreign platforms. Yet, as our analysis shows, the nationalizing effects of this digital infrastructure requires “buy-in” from citizens. We first investigate how and why people’s digital activities tend to be confined to the national “walled garden” of Chinese platforms. Second, we highlight the role of WeChat as the primary node in China’s digital ecosystem and demonstrate how ordinary citizens use it, in a largely taken-for-granted manner, to sustain a plethora of nationally bounded relationships and activities. Finally, we examine the tiny number of participants that move beyond this ecosystem and their motivations for both venturing out and returning “home.”