The Center for Social Data Analytics Speaker Series Presents: Valerie Li (Political Science)

Title: Speaking as One: Mass Petitioning and State Responsiveness in China

Abstract: How do citizens voice their grievances under authoritarian rule when street protest is risky and increasingly rare? I examine mass petitioning—high-volume campaigns of

identical or near-duplicate petitions submitted to authorities—and assess its implications for state responsiveness. I argue that mass petitions are often rejected because their

low-effort, high-volume format signals low political threat to grassroots bureaucrats. Using text data from over 100,000 online public complaints submitted to Chinese city

governments, I employ a text-reuse detection method to identify more than 4,000 mass petition campaigns. Analyses show that local governments are more likely to

reject mass petitions than individual submissions, but this negative association is attenuated when participants substantially modify the form letter, indicating higher

effort. This article shows how citizens adapt collective claims-making to online channels and advances understanding of emerging forms of contention under authoritarian rule

Bio: I am a dual-title Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Pennsylvania State University. My substantive research interest focuses on everyday resistance in authoritarian regimes. Methodologically, I am interested in text-as-data, network analysis, interviews in sensitive contexts, and survey experiments. While I have published work and working papers on cross-national and democratic contexts, my regional expertise is in China. My work is forthcoming on Social Media + Society.