Investigating online news diversities on WeChat: How are users experiencing news in a platform context?

This research investigates news diversity on WeChat from the users’ perspective. Drawing on a content analysis of news on 10 WeChat Official Accounts across two collection periods in 2019 and 2023, together with a walkthrough analysis of the platform, this study examines how topic and narrative diversity are shaped within users’ platformised news experience. We argue that there is an ambient turn in WeChat users’ news experience in terms of news content (production) characterised by the parallel process of trivialisation of news and politicisation of everyday life, news distribution via an ostensibly self-centred news feeding system, and news engagement via self-centred networks where public and private spheres become porous. The Chinese party-state's control and manipulation of media is becoming ambient as it further penetrates the periphery of the political system. The risk to a robust civil society escalates when harmony is a goal shared by both the party-state and ordinary news users.