Journal of Language, Media and Society

Articles

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Spring 2026

RUMOR AS CRISIS DISCOURSE: MEANINGMAKING AND MICRO-RESISTANCE IN SHANGHAI’S DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66056/jlms.2026.v1i1.003
Submitted
May 20, 2026
Published
May 20, 2026

Abstract

This article examines how digital rumors functioned as crisis discourse during the 2022 Shanghai lockdown, serving both as improvised meaning-making and as fragmented acts of microresistance. Drawing on digital ethnography and discourse analysis, the study investigates how residents in a middle-class compound used WeChat groups to circulate, interpret, and act upon rumors amidst strict state censorship and material deprivation. Rather than approaching rumors as mere misinformation, the article conceptualizes them as emergent discursive practices that filled communicative voids, generated grassroots knowledge, and temporarily disrupted dominant state narratives. Grounded in Gramsci’s notion of common sense and Shibutani’s theory of improvised news, the analysis highlights the dialectical nature of rumor as both a survival mechanism and a contested form of bottom-up discourse in authoritarian settings. Framed within the global condition of the post-truth era, this study foregrounds the role of digital platforms specifically WeChat as sites where discourse, power, and control are simultaneously produced, circulated, and contested. In contexts where traditional information infrastructures are compromised, platforms become critical battlegrounds for meaning-making, where rumor emerges as a form of user-generated epistemology. The Shanghai case offers broader insights into how platform architectures, algorithmic visibility, and moderation regimes shape the formation and suppression of alternative discourses during crises. By tracing the micro-politics of rumor in Shanghai’s digital public sphere, this article contributes to transnational debates on crisis communication, platform governance, and the shifting dynamics of voice and resistance in digitally mediated authoritarian and post-authoritarian societies.

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