When the state-affiliated media adopts fandom strategies: the relationship between cute China and citizenship in the digital era

This study investigates the novel adoption of fandom-style strategies by Chinese state-affiliated media, a significant evolution in digital political communication. Through a mixed-methods analysis combining LDA topic modeling of 41,287 Weibo posts and a survey ( N = 832), we explore how state-affiliated media-led fandom-style strategies progressed from fostering civic identity to explicit anthropomorphism and idolization. Qualitative findings reveal that public engagements is highly contingent: initial strategies achieved broad engagement by aligning with civic-duty schemas, while fan-cultural strategies provoked polarization driven by perceived contextual triviality. Quantitative analysis confirms that the attitudes towards such strategies are significantly affected by public trust, acceptance, and pre-existing cognitive familiarity with fandom culture, but the attitude scores are at the lower level. Based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis, we conclude that the reason fandom-style strategies tend to be reluctantly accepted under both special and normal circumstances lies in the distinction between the solemn nature of state-affiliated media and the entertainment-oriented characteristics of fandom-style strategies. Some members of the participants believe that novel and engaging strategies may yield short-term engagement mobilization, but caution is still warranted when considering long-term approaches. These results offer a critical lens for analyzing the trend where political actors appropriate digital subcultures, highlighting the connections between affective mobilization and authentic public engagement.