From WeChat to Weibo: Platformization and the Transformation of China’s Digital Public Sphere
I. Introduction
In September 2025, China's Cyberspace Administration launched a two-month campaign to purify the internet environment, eliminating “excessively exaggerated negative and pessimistic sentiments". Posts related to youth unemployment on Weibo have disappeared; Comments corresponding to desperation have been quietly disabled. With the purpose of cultivating a more positive digital environment, these initiatives are not the tightening of control but are attempts to reshape the emotional tone of public discourse. Behind this campaign lies the transformation in China’s mediated public life: the platformization of the public sphere.
Platformization, defined by how digital platforms expand their power into many parts of society that further transform how industries operate, reveals the significance of the campaign. Today, as digitalization becomes increasingly popular with its convenience and increased efficiency, many
main areas of communication for the public have taken place in digital platforms like WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin. Within these platforms, it is the algorithm, content policies, and technical affordance that determine what to be seen, discussed, or shared, affecting not only the content
flow but also the affective climate of participation. The Chinese public sphere has thus evolved into a platformized public, where the expressions are simultaneously expanded by digital interactivity and guided with boundaries by infrastructural power.
II. From Public Sphere to Platformization
The concept of the public sphere has long been revolved in understanding how citizens engage in collective discussion. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas describes it as an area for rational and open debate, with individuals gathered for discussion of matters of common concern, being independent from national or market impact. Even though his model was grounded in the European bourgeois experience, scholars of later generations doubted its universality. For instance, Nancy Fraser, an American philosopher, believed that instead of being singular, the public sphere consisted of multiple overlapping dimensions shaped by power inequalities, cultural contexts, and institutional structures.
In the digital age, scholars propose the idea of platformization to describe how media, culture, and governance operate through digital platform organization. Poell, Nieborg, and van Dijck define platformization as the “penetration of economic, infrastructural, and governmental logic of platforms into the web and society”. Today, WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin not only provide communication channels but also fundamentally affect public interaction by algorithmic curation and datafication.
In China, the dynamics of platformization intersect with distinctive governance models and socio-economic realities. A “state-capital alliance” has been formed, with platforms operating under the hybrid system of state oversight and market innovation. Here, the public sphere underwent not abolishment but reformation: platforms now are the agents between citizen and organization, receiving a balance between business participation, social stability, and policy compliance. The algorithms and content policies help in building visibility and participation, creating a new form of governed publicness that reflects both technological empowerment and regulatory alignment. This shift in concept – from Habermas’s idea of open debate to change to become a public area of platform-based and emotional influence – provides a theoretical foundation for the analysis of China’s digital transformation.
III. How Platformization Works in China
The operation model of China’s public sphere can be seen from three different types of digital ecosystems: WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin. Each platform demonstrates how design, governance, and user behavior interact together in building the public sphere.
First, WeChat integrates message, payment, news, and official accounts as one “super app”. Its structure supports micro-communities (semi-private chat groups, official accounts, and mini-programs) while embedding traceability and real-name verification mechanisms. Here, communication occurs within a closed ecosystem, which encourages stability and moderate discourse. Weibo, on the other hand, operates more in a semi-public sphere, with hashtags, trending topics, and repost networks. While it provides more visibility, the algorithm prioritizes pushing hot and emotionally engaging content that mainly revolves around entertainment and lifestyle topics instead of contentious issues. Moreover, Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) almost entirely relies on the algorithm, which pushes short-term videos based on users’ engagement and emotional resonance. In the platform, visibility is determined by likes, comments, and watch time rather than deliberative discourse.
Within the three leading platforms, algorithmic curation has replaced editorial oversight: The content users receive is determined by data-driven precision instead of personal choice. To delve deeper, the design is able to take into account both business and governance functions. Specifically, the algorithms can provide tailored content to enhance user participation, and it can also guide collective attention into topics aligned with social cohesion and optimism – a form of affective governance embedded in code.
It is important to understand that the relationship between platform and state is actually not hierarchical but cooperative. Through cooperation in content review, real-name authentication, and regulatory directives, the CAC and platform companies coordinate to maintain what officials call a “clean and positive cyberspace.” The campaign against “excessive negativity” in 2025 applies the platform's technological system, including keyword filters, moderation teams, and AI-based detection, to turn policy goals into specific operations. This cooperative model exemplifies state-capital configuration, in which commercial platforms can simultaneously
connect content management with the state’s goal while keeping its revenue through advertisement and data analysis.
Rather than suppressing participation, this model actually incorporates participation with social governance. The platform acts as a data mediator that helps translate the public's emotions into quantifiable information, which enables authorities to detect potential issues and respond with corresponding initiatives. With the data-driven feedback loops, platforms play the role of both communication facilitators and management instruments.
It’s worth noticing that even though there exist multiple regulatory layers, Chinese users still exhibit considerable sovereignty and creativity. For instance, during the sensitive moment of White Paper Protests of late 2022, netizens devised subtle strategies to continue the conversation, utilizing Homophones, emoticons, and images to navigate automated review systems; create a temporary-only WeChat group chat; or repost the screenshot of an overseas platform. Yang describes such practices as “networked improvisation,” reflecting how users continue to adapt to platform affordances and policy boundaries.
Moreover, the platform also fosters new forms of cultural participation. Influencers and content creators start blending entertainment with reflective commentary to engage the audience. Even in 2025’s “campaign addressing online negativity,” humorous and ironic expressions of frustration can still be seen on the internet, showing that regulation reshapes rather than eliminates emotional communication. This type of flexibility – participation that is dynamic while contained – defines China’s digital public sphere, in which the negotiation unfolds among the country's priorities, platform’s algorithm, and user’s innovation.
Taken together, we can see how China’s public sphere is restructured through platformization: WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin function as mediating infrastructures that balance interactivity with governance, creativity with compliance.
IV. Discussion: Rethinking the Public Sphere in Platform China
China’s case challenges the traditional public perspective of open rational debate, proving how the contemporary public sphere retains an infrastructural character built by interaction between algorithm, data policy, and user practices. The digitalization of the public sphere is not the perish of collective debate; instead, it is the transformation into a form of data-driven and affect-regulated public. Within this framework, the traditional boundary blurs. WeChat messages, TikTok’s videos, and Weibo’s hashtags circulate through the fuse of logic between personal expression, entertainment, and governance. No matter it’s the initiatives that advocate “positivity” or constraint of "negativity", they all demonstrate how emotion has become a core element in digital supervision. The public sphere is no longer just rational discourse; it's the mechanism to coordinate sentiment and visibility while aligning participatory behavior with broader social and political goals.
Taking a further look, this environment also nurtures innovation and resilience. User-adaptible behavior illustrates how autonomy can flourish under limited conditions. Public discourse, as a negotiated process, can be shaped in different forms under technology, regulations, and everyday
improvisation. Understanding this hybridity goes beyond Western binaries of freedom versus control, providing a more nuanced perspective on how the public is mediated and governed in contemporary digital situations.
V. Conclusion
China’s consistent evolving digital environment reveals how the public sphere can be refined with digitalization. Platforms like WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin have become infrastructure for confluence between communication, sentiment, and governance. The initiative of 2025, “curing negative emotion,” demonstrates how national objectives and platform architecture interact, not just shaping what is discussed online but also how it is experienced emotionally. Using algorithms, emotional design, and cooperative governance between state and market as an assistive tool, this process is not the decline of participation but a reconfiguration of publicness. Recognizing this hybrid system challenges the common theory of media and democracy. It highlights that, whether it’s in China or other countries, digital platforms are shaping a public sphere that is both participatory and algorithmically programmed. China’s experience offers valuable insight into how digitalization for the public sphere can achieve a delicate balance between participation, emotion, and control; it is no other thing but how the society designs infrastructure – how it makes the public see, feel, and connect – that matters the most.
