1 Nip, J. Y., & Fu, K. W. (2016). Challenging Official Propaganda? Public Opinion Leaders on Sina Weibo. The China Quarterly, 225, 122-144. Challenging Official Propaganda? Public Opinion Leaders on Sina Weibo * Joyce Y. M. Nip † and King-wa Fu ‡ Abstract This article examines the prominence of various user categories as opinion leaders, defined as initiators, agenda setters or disseminators, in 29 corruption cases exposed on Sina Weibo. It finds that ordinary citizens made up the largest category of initiators but that their power of opinion leadership was limited as they had to rely on media organizations to spread news about the cases. News organizations and online media were the main opinion leaders. Government and Party bodies initiated a fair number of cases and, despite not being strong agenda setters or disseminators, were able to dominate public opinion owing to the fact that news organizations and online media mainly published official announcements about the cases. Media organizations also played a secondary role as the voice of the people. While individuals from some other user categories were able to become prominent opinion leaders, news workers are likely to be the most promising user category to challenge official propaganda. Keywords: China; internet; propaganda; public opinion; social media; Weibo Weibo 微博 has made news headlines in recent years for exposing the wrongdoings of officials and reporting protest actions in China. The Chinese authorities have responded with a series of crackdowns on Weibo users and usage, while at the same time stepping up their own use of online media. This paper seeks to understand the implications of Weibo for the landscape of public opinion in China, in particular with regard to opportunities afforded to Chinese citizens to express in public their concerns and thoughts and the impact this has on the functioning of the party-state apparatus. This paper is motivated by a bigger concern: the implications of the internet for a more open and democratic China. Scholars have arrived at three schools of thought in this regard. One sees the internet as empowering citizens and civil society organizations and thus has the potential to increase freedom and facilitate democracy. 1 Another sees the authoritarian party-state using the internet to control society further and strengthen the regime as part of its adaptation. 2 A middle-ground position sees the future as indeterminate, with civil society engaged in a continual battle of “resistance” against and “negotiation” with the party-state, resulting in the two sides becoming mutually transformative. 3 This paper contributes to this discussion by examining the usage of one particular internet technology, Weibo, in the exposure of 29 officials accused of corruption in the two months following the confirmation of the new Xi Jinping 习近平/Li Keqiang 李克强 administration in November 2012. Similar studies on China have mostly employed a descriptive-analytical case study approach, favouring cases that involve resistance and push-back from civil society. This study is complementary by studying a large number of cases that were not selected for their * The first author’s research is supported by the Faculty Research Support Scheme of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney. The second author’s research project is supported by the University of Hong Kong Seed Funding Program for Basic Research and the General Research Fund, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong (Project Code: 17402314). † Department of Media and Communications, The University of Sydney. Email: joyce.nip@sydney.edu.au (corresponding author). ‡ Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong.