This study theorizes the formation of affective publics by analyzing the hashtag mourning event #FarewellAndMemory surrounding Zhu Ling in China. Drawing on sentiment, thematic, and discourse analysis, it maps a three-stage process of affective publics: emergence, where morally triggered affect arises in response to perceived injustice; circulation, where empathetic emotions transform across networked bodies; and publicity, where affect is negotiated and expressed through culturally encoded moral vocabularies. Unlike liberal paradigms grounded in rights-based discourse, affective publics in China are shaped by embedded moral values, transforming affect into visibility through culturally resonant concepts that reflect zhen-shan-mei (truth-goodness-beauty), gongzheng (justice) and zhengyi (righteousness). This trajectory reflects a negotiated affective dynamic within China's sociopolitical framework, where affect becomes both culturally grounded and politically adaptive. This culturally grounded affective dynamic reveals how moral order underlies the emergence of what this article conceptualizes as moralized affective publics in a non-Western sociopolitical framework.
AbdullaR (2023) Social media, the public sphere, and public space in authoritarian settings: A case study of Egypt’s tahrir square and 18 years of user generated content. Social Media + Society9(1): 1–13.
2.
AhmedS (2004) Affective economies. Social Text22(2): 117–139.
3.
AhmedS (2013) The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press.
4.
AhmedS (2014) The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
5.
BennettWLSegerbergA (2012) The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information, Communication & Society15(5): 739–768.
6.
BerlantL (2005) The epistemology of state emotion. In: SaratA (ed) Dissent in Dangerous Times. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 46–78.
7.
BerlantL (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press.
8.
BingamanJ (2022) “Dude i’ve never felt this way towards a celebrity death”: Parasocial grieving and the collective mourning of kobe bryant on reddit. OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying86(2): 364–381.
9.
ChamberlainP (2016) Affective temporality: Towards a fourth wave. Gender and Education28(3): 458–464.
10.
ChengC-Y (1972) On the unity of knowledge and action in wang yang-ming. Journal of Chinese Philosophy1(1): 21–37.
CouldryN (2003) Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge.
13.
CvetkovichA (2003) An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press.
14.
CvetkovichA (2012) Depression: A Public Feeling. Durham: Duke University Press.
15.
DahlbergL (2014) The Habermasian public sphere and exclusion: An engagement with poststructuralist-influenced critics. Communication Theory24(1): 21–41.
16.
DaiL (2025) Affective (counter) publics as a critical concept: Rethinking affective publics from the history of Chinese Americans in the exclusion era. Communication Theory35(1): 51–62.
17.
DawsonP (2020) Hashtag narrative: Emergent storytelling and affective publics in the digital age. International Journal of Cultural Studies23(6): 968–983.
18.
DayanDKatzE (1992) Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
19.
DeweyJ (1996) Theory of the Moral Life. New York: Irvington Publishers.
20.
FarleyW (1990) Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
21.
FroshPPinchevskiA (2018) Media and events after Media events. Media, Culture & Society40(1): 135–138.
GeboersMAVan De WieleCT (2020) Regimes of visibility and the affective affordances of twitter. International Journal of Cultural Studies23(5): 745–765.
24.
GeertzC (2017) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
25.
GiaxoglouK (2017) #Jesuischarlie? Hashtags as narrative resources in contexts of ecstatic sharing. Discourse, Context & Media22: 13–20.
26.
GouldDB (2009) Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
27.
HabermasJ (1991) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois society (T. Burger & F. Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge: MIT Press.
28.
HanR (2018) Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience. New York: Columbia University Press.
29.
HillisKPaasonenSPetitM (eds) (2015) Networked Affect. Cambridge: MIT Press.
30.
JacksonSJBaileyMWellesBF (2020) #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. Cambridge: MIT Press.
31.
JacksonSJWellesBF (2015) Hijacking #myNYPD: Social media dissent and networked counterpublics. Journal of Communication65(6): 932–952.
32.
KavadaA (2015) Creating the collective: Social media, the occupy movement and the space of appearance. Information, Communication & Society18(8): 872–886.
33.
KohlbergL (1976) Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive-developmental approach. In: LickonaT (ed) Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research, and Social Issues. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 31–53.
34.
LaraMP (1998) Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere. Berkeley: University of California Press.
35.
LarmoreC (2017) The Morals of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36.
LeiYW (2018) The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
37.
LevinsonM (1999) The Demands of Liberal Education. New York: Oxford University Press.
38.
LiC (2023) The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony. London: Routledge.
39.
LiaoS (2022) Fashioning Post-feminism: Spectacular Femininity, Neoliberal Politics, and the Chinese Digital Queer. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
LünenborgM (2020) Performative publics: Media practice as an analytic model. In: WaisbordSde BeerA (eds) Theories of Journalism in a Digital age. London: Routledge, 192–204.
42.
MassumiB (2021) Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press.
43.
MendesKKellerJRingroseJ (2019) Digitized narratives of sexual violence: Making sexual violence felt and known through digital disclosures. New Media & Society21(6): 1290–1310.
44.
PapacharissiZ (2015) Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
45.
PapacharissiZ (2016) Affective publics and structures of storytelling: Sentiment, events and mediality. Information, Communication & Society19(3): 307–324.
46.
PapacharissiZde Fatima OliveiraM (2012) Affective news and networked publics: The rhythms of news storytelling on #Egypt. Journal of Communication62(2): 266–282.
47.
PayneR (2016) ‘Je suis Charlie’: Viral circulation and the ambivalence of affective citizenship. International Journal of Cultural Studies20(1): 24–40.
48.
PedwellCWhiteheadA (2012) Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory. Feminist Theory13(2): 115–129.
49.
PrinzJJ (2007) The Emotional Construction of Morals. New York: Oxford University Press.
50.
RonzhynACardenalASBatlle RubioA (2023) Defining affordances in social media research: A literature review. New Media & Society25(11): 3165–3188.
51.
SadlerN (2018) Narrative and interpretation on Twitter: Reading tweets by telling stories. New Media & Society20(9): 3266–3282.
52.
SampsonTD (2012) Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
53.
SeigworthGGreggM (2010) An inventory of shimmers. In: GreggMSeigworthG (eds) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 138–157.
54.
SharmaS (2013) Black Twitter? Racial hashtags, networks and contagion. New Formations78: 46–64.
StewartK (2007) Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke University Press.
57.
TurnerJHStetsJE (2005) The Sociology of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
58.
TurnerV (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
59.
UralH (2023) Rethinking affective publics as media rituals through temporality, performativity and liminality. Media, Culture & Society45(5): 1036–1049.
60.
von ScheveCSlabyJ (2019) Affective Societies: KEY Concepts. London: Routledge.
61.
Wahl-JorgensenK (2019a) Emotions, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
62.
Wahl-JorgensenK (2019b) Questioning the ideal of the public sphere: The emotional turn. Social Media + Society5(3): 1–3.
63.
WetherellM (2012) Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. London: Sage Publications.
64.
WillemsW (2023) The reproduction of canonical silences: Re-reading Habermas in the context of slavery and the slave trade. Communication, Culture and Critique16(1): 17–24.
65.
WongDB (2004) Relational and autonomous selves. Journal of Chinese Philosophy31(4): 419–432.
66.
WongDB (2023) Mind (heart-mind) in Chinese philosophy. In: ZaltaEN (ed) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition). Stanford University, Metaphysics Research Lab. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/chinese-mind/ (accessed 7 July 2024).
67.
XingG (2013) Online Activism and the Public Sphere in China. London: Routledge.
68.
YangG (2009) The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism and Online Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
69.
ZhangY (2015) The cosmopolitics of compassion: Morality and affect in Chinese internet activism [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Sydney: University of Technology Sydney.
