Online compassion on the border: The case of Chinese undergraduates on social media in the first weave of COVID-19 pandemic

As a prosocial response towards others’ suffering exposed on social media, online compassion played a critical role in the pandemic crisis. Against the backdrop of the pandemic and the over-use of social media, it may be difficult to elicit and maintain online compassion. This study examines the unique challenges faced by online compassion towards social media news in the first weave of pandemic. The theoretical frame of cultural psychology of semiotic mediation was adopted to highlight online compassion as a fluid bordering process characterized by the mechanisms of distinction, affectivization and transformation. An empirical interview study with Chinese undergraduate students was also included to show the dynamic evolving process of online compassion from December, 2019 to June 2020. The results revealed a hierarchical semiotic regulation process integrating both the pre-reflective affective level and the higher cognitive level, leading to different paths of online compassion evolving into distress or acts in real life.