Negotiating Professional Roles in a Constrained Media System: Role Perception and Narrated Enactment among Fact-Checkers in China

This study offers the first detailed investigation into how Chinese fact-checkers perceive and narrate the enactment of professional roles within a constrained media environment. Drawing on 14 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with fact-checkers from four types of Chinese fact-checking organizations, the article provides rare qualitative evidence on a professional community that remains difficult to access. The study identifies six roles rooted in the Chinese media context: educator, rumor-buster, curator, independent advocate, gate-watcher, and facilitator. These roles show how fact-checkers negotiate professional ideals, institutional constraints, and national communication priorities in their everyday work. The article contributes to journalistic role theory by linking role perception with narrated role enactment. It shows that professional roles in constrained media systems are not simply adopted or abandoned, but situationally interpreted, negotiated, and combined. Rather than revealing a sharp divide between ideals and practice, the findings suggest a relatively strong convergence between perceived roles and narrated enactment. This convergence reflects the stability of Chinese fact-checkers’ professional self-image under institutional constraint. The article therefore demonstrates how Chinese fact-checkers articulate, justify, and normalize their professional roles, while foregrounding the symbolic and discursive processes through which perception and enactment are connected.