The Articulation Loop: State Signaling, Platform Infrastructures, and User Weaponization in China's Qinglang Era

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Qinglang (Clear and Bright), China's campaign‐based discourse of internet content governance, sustains regulatory force as its meaning shifts across state, platform, and user domains. It develops the articulation loop as a mechanism for explaining how a state‐authored yet semantically open signifier acquires practical force through its connections to institutional authority, platform governance infrastructures, organized user practices, and selective regulatory recalibration. Drawing on articulation theory and adaptive governance, the article traces Qinglang across three domains. At the state level, Qinglang operates as a floating signifier through which changing governance problems can be periodically named, sequenced, and recentralized in special campaigns. At the platform level, platforms bind Qinglang to rules, reporting channels, visibility controls, and rectification procedures, while enforcement remains commercially calibrated. At the user level, organized fans weaponize Qinglang‐linked compliance categories to reframe peer conflicts, seek visibility penalties, and conduct reverse audits of platform accountability. The article conceptualizes Qinglang‐era content governance as a form of state‐led multistakeholderism, in which participation by platforms and users is organized within a state‐defined normative order that makes participation selectively actionable while preserving final authority at the state level.