Research Question: How do citizens view authoritarian responsiveness?

Data: To investigate this question, we examine a particular aspect of the Chinese government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis in early 2020, namely, the introduction of a special hashtag that allowed Weibo users to directly solicit assistance for possible COVID patients otherwise unable to receive help.

Methods: To test the effect of viewing help-seeking posts on perceptions of government performance, as well as emotions and other political attitudes, we conduct a survey experiment in which we directly expose subjects to help-seeking posts.

Findings: Our findings suggest that government responsiveness, in this case, alerts citizens to an existing problem with governance which they were previously unaware of, in turn worsening their perceptions of government effectiveness.

We then complete a social media study in which we analyze over 10,000 real Weibo (Chinese Twitter) posts which discuss the phenomenon of direct help-seeking on Weibo, and demonstrate that negative and critical posts far outweigh positive and praising posts, corroborating our causal study.