The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
WeChat: social and political development of China’s dominant messaging app
Abstract
This article traces the development of the Chinese social media app WeChat from its origins to its current role as a leading communications tool for some 600 million Chinese citizens. It analyzes the ways the small-group oriented app is changing China’s social connections, as it enhances trusted, personal contacts while transforming opportunities for larger online group formation. The article assesses methods the Chinese Government employs to monitor and control WeChat communication, and provides a case-focus study. It also considers the apolitical features, in particular, those related to entertainment and personal social relations, which have made important contributions to WeChat’s great popularity.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being?
Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukophadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1998) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.53.9.1017 · Cited by 4,793
How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression
KING, G., PAN, J., & ROBERTS, M. E. (2013) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055413000014 · Cited by 2,415 · cited 2×
“In a comprehensive data-driven study, King, Pan, and Roberts (2013) focused on Internet content to examine the targets of government censors.”
BackgroundPolitical Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere: Below the Radar
Esarey, A., & Qiang, X. (2008) · Asian Survey · doi:10.1525/as.2008.48.5.752 · Cited by 165
Cited by
Hou, F., Bi, F., Jiao, R., Luo, D., & Song, K. (2020) · BMC Public Health · doi:10.1186/s12889-020-09738-7 · Cited by 320
Metadata
- Authors
- Harwit, E.
- Venue
- Chinese Journal of Communication
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2016-08-30
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 312-327
- ISSN
- 1754-4750 (ISSN-L)
- 1754-4769
- OpenAlex
- W2512638470
- Cited by
- 164
- References
- 3
- FWCI
- 37.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: WeChat: social and political development of China’s dominant messaging app. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/17544750.2016.1213757
- The paper
- Harwit, E. (2017). WeChat: social and political development of China’s dominant messaging app. Chinese Journal of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2016.1213757
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.