Virtual mutual care practices of Chinese people amid censorship during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China

Abstract

The initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic hit Wuhan, China, in early January 2020, and restrictive lockdown measures were implemented. Risks of transmission and the lockdown measures severely disrupted everyday life and affected the well-being of local residents. Applying institutional ethnography and autoethnography, this study focuses on the virtual mutual care of Chinese social network site users, which attended to the hardship of local people through activities in cyberspace. Not only were the virtual mutual care activities lifesaving, as they tackled critical challenges of the affected residents, but they also had radical meanings, as they strived for solidarity and justice in the context of crisis.