The next session at the 2026 International Communication Association conference in Cape Town is on censorship and self-censorship, and we start with a paper by Wenqing Cheng, whose focus is on platform censorship in China. Censorship typically produces backlash and chilling effects, yet in China many citizens remain apathetic towards censorship or even support it. This might be a sign that censorship has been normalised, but this explanation in itself may not be enough.
Citizens also experience censorship through how it is done; this might take the form of direct notifications, or more indirect shadowbanning. This may be affected by trust in algorithms, and attributions of motives to such processes. It also depends on whether censored content is limited to political content or covers broader areas, and whether it is censored by governments or commercial platforms.
Direct censorship notifications may be experienced as fair; shadowbans may be experienced as intransparent and unfair. Trust in algorithms might increase support for censorship, a lack of trust might reduce it. Overall willingness to be obedient to such interventions might also affect attitudes towards censorship.
This project tested this through focus groups and cross-sectional surveys with some 780 Weibo users. It found a complex network of cross-influences which determine support for censorship interventions: obedience and notifications increase trust in algorithms; shadowbans reduce it; this increases support for censorship, also as delegated to platforms.
This means that shadowbanning backfires once users see that it is happening; notifications of censorship increases transparency, which legitimises such interventions; motive attribution is a new normalisation mechanism, as it enables a perception of censorship as a delegated state mechanism. But of course, this is a sensitive topic in China, so participant responses may be coloured by their own self-censorship of responses.
