The politics of kinship: social credit, digital vigilantism, and celebrity governance in China

Abstract

The article critically examines the politics of kinship in celebrity governance in China using the social credit scandals of four young idols’ parents as examples. We make two important arguments. First, Social Credit System, as the state-led digital surveillance project, has generated bottom-up digital vigilantism practice for the public to supervise people with money and fame. Second, kinship has become an emerging means of celebrity governance in China’s unique familial relations, moral system and celebrity ecology. This has increased the precarity and vulnerability of being a celebrity in China as they have to be responsible not only for their own behaviours and moralities but also for those of their close family members.

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