Digital resistance against linguistic invisibility: Discursive positionings of resistance in the #Pro-Cantonese movement on Douyin

While there is a sizable body of scholarship on China’s social media and digital culture, including discourse-analytic studies, research into more contentious forms of discourse or how the internet and new technologies facilitate digital activism on the Chinese internet has remained sparse. This is especially true for newer types of platforms such as those built around short-form videos. This study takes the recent #Pro-Cantonese movement (PCM) on Douyin as a case study to investigate how users employ various technological and semiotic affordances to position themselves in response to the platform’s surveillance of Cantonese content. Using a critical multimodal approach, we analyzed 264 short videos under the hashtag #PCM posted between 1 September 2022 to 31 March 2023. Five distinct positions were identified within the PCM: radical activists, playful activists, positive energy patriots, rational experts, and cultural ambassadors. These results contribute to our understanding of the multi-faceted forms of everyday activism in China’s digital spheres and shed light on the sociocultural, technological, economic-political logics of platform culture in contemporary China.