diff --git a/AFNetworking/AFJSONRequestOperation.m b/AFNetworking/AFJSONRequestOperation.m
index 008aacc..ac7423a 100644
--- a/AFNetworking/AFJSONRequestOperation.m
+++ b/AFNetworking/AFJSONRequestOperation.m
@@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ static dispatch_queue_t json_request_operation_processing_queue() {
         } else {
             // Workaround for a bug in NSJSONSerialization when Unicode character escape codes are used instead of the actual character
             // See http://stackoverflow.com/a/12843465/157142
-            NSData *JSONData = [self.responseString dataUsingEncoding:self.responseStringEncoding];
+            NSData *JSONData = [self.responseString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
             self.responseJSON = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:JSONData options:self.JSONReadingOptions error:&error];
         }