Moral goodness and social orderliness: An analysis of the official media discourse about Internet governance in China

• This study examined the official media discourse about Internet governance in China.
• The rationales of Internet governance include moral goodness, personal security and social stability.
• China’s official discourse has increasingly treated the Internet as a destabilizing field of contentions.
• The discursive framework of Internet governance has remained coherent but is also evolving to adapt to technological changes.

The rapid expansion of the Internet in China has seen a concomitant rise in government regulation. While most existing studies have approached this issue from a technical or institutional perspective, few have examined how China’s official media discourses work to legitimize its Internet governance. Based on a content and discourse analysis of 301 articles published by China Communist Party’s central mouthpiece, People’s Daily (2000–2014), this study explores how Internet governance is discursively constituted and practiced in China. The findings suggest that China’s state-run media consistently justifies Internet governance on the basis of moral goodness, personal security, and social stability. Over the years, official media discourse has changed from viewing the Internet as a technological space with potential moral and security concerns to treating it as a destabilizing field of contentions. The findings also demonstrate the ways in which China’s Internet governance framework is evolving in step with the pace of technological change.