Censorship in the Semi-private Domain: A Theory of Cross-domain Variation and Evidence from WeChat

Previous work addressing China’s censorship regime has primarily focused on public information from social media sites and not information shared more intimately. This article focuses on semi-private information and its impact on collective action, using an original experiment to test established censorship theories in this overlooked domain. The results suggest that censors treat information critiquing the government and calling for collective action with equal hostility, unlike in the public domain in which the former category is more likely to be disregarded. Further, this article finds evidence of human involvement in semi-private domain censorship. This study aims to complement existing literature on authoritarian control of information with a view to the regime’s effort to prevent collective action and political opportunities that can be exploited by dissent.