How can the poor and weak “work”a political system to their advantage?
Drawing mainly on interviews and surveys in rural China, Kevin O’Brien and
Lianjiang Li show that popular action often hinges on locating and exploiting
divisions within the state. Otherwise powerless people use the rhetoric and
commitments of the central government to try to fight misconduct by local
officials, open up clogged channels of participation, and push back the frontiers of the permissible. This “rightful resistance” has far-reaching implications for our understanding of contentious politics. As O’Brien and Li explore the origins, dynamics, and consequences of rightful resistance, they highlight similarities between collective action in places as varied as China, the former East Germany, and the United States, while suggesting how Chinese experiences speak to issues such as opportunities to protest, claims radicalization, tactical innovation, and the outcomes of contention. Although the focus of their rich, ground-level analysis is contemporary China, the authors make a compelling argument that wherever a gap between rights promised and rights delivered exists, there is room for rightful resistance to emerge.

“This landmark book is the first to fully explain how memes have become a critical part of UK politics. Through rich and convincing empirical analysis, Southern reveals how digital humour is transforming citizen participation, elite communication, and the very nature of political discourse. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the evolution of digital political culture and its profound impact on democracy.” !-- [if !supportLists]--– !--[endif]--James Dennis, Researcher at Lusófona University, Portugal “From ‘shitposts’ to ‘Karen memes’, political communication is changing and Rosalynd Southern is a lively guide to the pithy world of memes. A cutting-edge study that deserves to be read. — Stephen Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Political Communication, University of Leeds, UK In 2015, a story emerged alleging that then-Prime Minister David Cameron had placed ‘a private part of his anatomy’ into the mouth of a dead pig’s head during an initiation ceremony at the University of Oxford. Upon this allegation breaking, social media erupted with a plethora of memes and jokes about the incident, which became known as ‘Piggate’. Although there had been a move towards jovial talk of politics on social media prior to this, the episode seemed to distil the practice and precipitate a new era of near-constant humorous online reaction to political events. Considering this context, this book assesses how memetic practices have shaped political communication and culture in the past decade-plus, and the consequences thereof. It does so from four perspectives, encompassing a focus on ordinary citizens, a group of online activists, a key social media satirist and, finally, focusing on how elites have deployed these practices.

This book examines how government propaganda and everyday online activity shaped China’s digital nationalism in response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.With a focus on Weibo, it demonstrates how state media promoted nationalism and how the public responded by either supporting or quietly challenging official narratives, or reshaping them. Using a variety of methods, including large-scale social media analysis and focused case studies, the book shows how digital platforms became pivotal communication hubs during the pandemic. The book also examines state-led digital propaganda by outlets such as People's Daily, public reactions to China's vaccine policy, and the anger surrounding the Wuhan Red Cross scandal. Together, these cases reveal how emotion, visibility, and participation interact to sustain "soft authoritarianism," a form of governance based not only on censorship, but also on managing public sentiment and engagement. Accessible and timely, this book provides a new perspective on the relationship between propaganda, nationalism, and digital media. It illustrates how nationalism and political authority are co-produced online and how governments and citizens negotiate power in an increasingly digital society.This book will be invaluable for scholars and students of political communication and digital media, as well as for those interested in the digital society of China.