Academic misconduct appeal services in China: Platform logics, self‐platformization and implications for integrity education

Abstract Academic misconduct appeal services have quietly emerged within China's education marketplace, with commercial agencies promoting themselves on social media to assist international students facing misconduct hearings. While existing research on academic integrity has emphasized prevention and detection, far less attention has been paid to what occurs after an allegation is raised and students enter formal appeal processes. This study examines the nature of these appeal services, how they operate in digital environments, and how platform logics shape their organization and visibility. Using BERTopic modelling, qualitative content analysis and digital ethnography, we analysed 996 promotional texts. We find that these agencies operate in a regulatory and ethical grey zone, ranging from sanction mitigation to claims of defending wrongly accused students. They strategically mobilize platform logics of visibility, credibility and scalability, packaging appeal support across the student lifecycle and translating cases into metrics such as success rates. We conceptualize this process as self‐platformization, through which commercial actors reorganize educational assistance in alignment with platform economies. By foregrounding the post‐violation stage, the study identifies blind spots in current integrity education and calls for a platform‐aware institutional response that strengthens procedural guidance, transparency and post‐violation learning support.