The politics of emotion during COVID-19: Turning fear into pride in China's WeChat discourse

Abstract

In this article, we analyse the most popular stories that circulated on WeChat public accounts concerning personalized experiences of COVID-19 in China during the first three months of 2020. Among these non-fictional online writings, we probe into ‘individual’ and mediated experiences with the coronavirus in China by questioning the visualizations and discourses of these stories and their producers, as well as the concomitant emotions they invoked. Parallel to the changing situation of the pandemic, we observe a diachronic evolution of emotions, from fear and doubt to (nationalist) pride. While articulating personalized experiences of the pandemic from disparate perspectives, the stories invariably built on, and were shaped by, the workings of the WeChat public account platform (公众平台) as evidenced by its content moderation logic and political economy. The analysis shows that emotions, rather than facts, propel the popularity of these stories. The measures taken by the state are mostly applauded, and only sometimes questioned; tragic memories are rewritten, and a political and economic order is consolidated.