The Contagion of Distant Politics: Partisan Discourse on Chinese-language Social Media During Major U.S. Political Events

This study examines how partisan events in the United States shape information ecosystems on Chinese-language social media platforms. Analyzing LLM-labeled posts from X and Weibo during the 2024 Trump assassination attempt, alongside posts and comments from RedNote during the 2024 presidential election, I show that: First, major political events trigger asymmetric content creation. Influencers dramatically increase posting while general users show modest increases, with all groups producing more misinformation and partisan content. Second, information flows during these events shape downstream online behavior of Chinese-speaking social media users. They exhibit partisan-like behavior that mirrors patterns observed in U.S. contexts, engaging more with partisan content while spreading partisan messages and misinformation. Their participation shows patterns of affective polarization and selective exposure. These effects transcend geographic boundaries but attenuate after the resolution of the events. The findings demonstrate that U.S. political polarization operates transnationally, shaping discourse among linguistically distant observers through platform-mediated mechanisms.