Tag Archives: nationalism

Hug fans or follow celebrities? How nationalism is reinforced on Chinese social media

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Ji Yeon Hong et al. ,Hug fans or follow celebrities? How nationalism is reinforced on Chinese social media.Sci. Adv.11,eadu8241(2025).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adu8241

How nationalism spreads and is reinforced has long been debated. This study examines how nationalistic messages and sentiments propagate on Chinese social media, focusing on interactions between celebrities and fans. We analyzed more than 8 million Weibo microblogs and comments, classified their content using machine-learning techniques, and examined the dynamics between celebrities and fans. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our findings reveal that fans exert a stronger influence on celebrities than vice versa in spreading nationalism. Fans often shape the nationalist narratives that celebrities amplify, with those aligned with specific political leanings (e.g., within the state-conformist camp) having a greater influence. These results highlight the critical role of grassroots online communities in shaping nationalism in nondemocratic contexts, offering insights into the dynamic interactions between the masses and influential figures in reinforcing nationalist ideologies and sentiments.

Aging in Nationhood: Everyday Nationalism and Belonging Among Seniors in Old-Age Homes in Québec

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Stallone, Jessica. 2025. “ Aging in Nationhood: Everyday Nationalism and Belonging Among Seniors in Old-Age Homes in Québec,” The British Journal of Sociology: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.70042.

Scholars of aging and nationalism rarely engage with each another. To remedy this gap, I examine how ethnonationalism becomes a resource for navigating the precarity of aging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two private senior residences in a region of Québec, I show how financially privileged Québécois seniors enact nationhood through everyday cultural practices. I introduce the concept of “aging in nationhood” to describe how seniors draw on ethnonationalist identities to foster comfort, community, and meaning at an age of decline—often with exclusionary effects. Seniors who do not—or cannot—assimilate into majority culture experience social isolation. By linking nationalism and aging, I show how seniors reproduce the nation, shaping their well-being and the boundaries of belonging. While grounded in Québec, this concept offers new insight for thinking about how dominant-group seniors mobilize ethnonationalism as a source of membership and exclusion in white aging societies across the Atlantic.