Reconsidering communication visibility in politically restrictive contexts: organizational social media use in China

Abstract

Increasing evidence reveals that social media visibility produces paradoxes in which actors simultaneously confront contradictory, even mutually exclusive, conditions. Yet limited research has explored how actors perceive these paradoxes and manage resulting tensions in a politically repressive context. Ubiquitous government oversight, information control, and Internet censorship may uniquely complicate paradoxes of visibility in non-Western environments. To address this gap, this research reconsiders the paradox(es) of visibility in politically restrictive contexts. Interview data from 50 social entrepreneurs and two field experts in China reveal the antecedents to visibility paradoxes, and suggest three novel forms of paradoxes: resource investment, public attention, and social change. We also show these paradoxes are interdependent such that one may be amplified or attenuated by the other paradoxes. Further, we identify three strategies for responding to these paradoxes and suggest implications for vulnerable actors in maintaining a public profile, especially in sensitive sociopolitical environments.