Introduction

The territorial dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu Islands (the Senkaku Islands in Japanese) in September 2012 triggered nationwide protests. Since Guangzhou was one of the main protest sites, thousands of people from other parts of China travelled there to launch their campaign against Japan. However, the protest turned violent as protesters damaged private and business properties in Guangzhou. In responding to these disruptions, some local commentators launched a Weibo [microblog] campaign to boycott the anti-Japan protest to protect Guangzhou from chaos and disruptions. The phrase ‘Diaoyu Islands are China's, but Guangzhou is ours!’ was the campaign slogan. Many Guangzhou's Weibo users were quick to follow by re-posting the message to their own networks.

This chapter examines the role of an opinion leader on Sina Weibo who conducted the online campaign that countered the nationwide anti-Japan protests in Guangzhou. Specifically, I focus on those online practices by the opinion leader and his followers which have reproduced the sense of locality of Guangzhou, the southern Chinese city near Hong Kong and Macau.

Current literature has established that the communication process in public communication is indirectly mediated through a few individuals — opinion leaders — who present their knowledge, expertise and authorities over the issue at hand in order to facilitate public engagement and participation (Katz 1957; Katz & Lazarsfeld 1955; Gokce et al. 2014). However, Sassen (2011, p. 574) argues that contemporary political practices are increasingly related to ‘the production of “presence”’. In other words, the formation of the publics and the reproduction of place are intricately connected, and this spatial-public dialectic redefines the role of opinion leader in the digital era. After determining one local media commentator as the opinion leader during the event, I ask two specific things. First, how did the opinion leader exploit Weibo's platform and Guangzhou's inhabitants’ experience of place in order to construct himself as a spatial subject rather than merely as a ‘political leader’? Second, how did he mobilise his Weibo followers to ‘re-make’ Guangzhou during a period of hypernationalism in China?