What are some of the ethical issues that you are grappling with in your research? What are some of the ways in which you are responding to these questions?

One of the key ethical challenges I am confronting in my research is the issue of maintaining user anonymity when analyzing discourse on Chinese social media platforms. Disclosing identifiable information—such as usernames, age, or other personal background details—may pose ethical concerns, particularly in contexts where individuals have not consented to having their content publicly scrutinized in academic work. To address this, I have chosen to anonymize all usernames and omit identifying information when conducting close readings of individual posts in my analysis.

As you continue your research, have you considered alternative viewpoints in your investigation? If so, how have these alternative viewpoints enriched or changed your project?

Yes, I have actively engaged with alternative perspectives in the process of developing my analytical framework. A particularly insightful suggestion came from my graduate mentor, Sara, during a recent office hours meeting. She encouraged me to critically examine whether certain discourses genuinely reflect ideological beliefs or if they instead perform ideological alignment in false consciousness—a concept associated with Marxist critique. This distinction between sincere expression and performative alignment has prompted me to refine my interpretive approach. I plan to incorporate this theoretical lens in the later stages of my research to more rigorously interrogate the ideological implications of the discursive material I have collected.