Thomas William Whyke
Biographic Data
| ID | 1247064 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas William Whyke |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas William |
| FAMILY NAME | Whyke |
| SIGNATURE | WHYKE T W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nottingham Ningbo China |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9771-3626 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Problematizing Anthropomorphism in Douyin’s Pet Video Platform Ecosystem
Virtual pets are anthropomorphically created by content creators who construct digital personas for their animals by presenting content from the pets’ supposed viewpoints. Through qualitative thematic analysis of 30,900 user comments from viral pet videos, this research reveals emotional bond formation mechanisms and their commodification within surveillance capitalism structures. The findings uncover a fundamental paradox wherein viewers demonst…
Mystery box fever and symbolic value in contemporary Chinese consumer society
Mystery boxes are probabilistic consumer products with no practical utility, but have become a multi-billion-dollar phenomenon in China. Existing scholarship largely treats them through psychological and behavioural lenses without interrogating their significance within the changing nature of symbolic value in contemporary Chinese consumer capitalism. This study addresses that gap by drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s sign value in dialogue with Karl …
Care across spaces: Chinese displaced artefacts in the British Museum and social media platforms
The story behind the cinematic true crime documentary: Working towards a typology
Historically, documentaries have employed cinematic techniques, but since the 1990s there has been a pronounced application of such devices for theatrical appeal. This trend, amplified by digital streaming platforms, raises concerns about representations of reality. To understand the scope of such concerns, a key question arises: what constitutes some of these ‘cinematic’ techniques used within documentaries? Despite claims that appealing documen…
Dematerialization and Digital Ink-Painting Aesthetics in Contemporary Chinese Animation: Redefining the ‘National Style’ in Deep Sea (2023)
This research scrutinizes the implications of the ‘national style’ in Chinese ink-painting animation, with a focus on the digital era transformation, utilizing Deep Sea (2023) as a case study. The authors employ a visual and critical analysis of the film’s innovative three-dimensional (3D) ‘particle-ink technology’, invented by director Tian Xiaopeng, which digitizes traditional elements like water and ink. They find that this shift from physical…
Cognition, willingness, and behavior towards human papillomavirus vaccination in Chinese university students: Planned behavior, health beliefs, and media influence
This study assessed Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination knowledge, willingness, and status among University of Nottingham Ningbo undergraduate students, utilizing the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and Health Belief Model (HBM). Self-administered questionnaires covered demographics, sexual behavior, and factors influencing vaccination intentions. Quantitative and qualitative analyses included t-tests, ANOVA, Pearson correlation, logistic re…
Cultural overflow vs. cultural export: Black Myth: Wukong and the evolution of Chinese gaming in global creative industries
This study examines Black Myth: Wukong, China’s first AAA (Triple-A) game, as a transformative medium that bridges traditional Chinese mythology and modern digital storytelling. Drawing from Journey to the West, a cornerstone of Chinese literary heritage, the game integrates advanced gaming technologies with immersive narratives, offering an organic reinterpretation of classical mythology for a global audience. Employing Walter Benjamin’s theory …
Digital echoes of conformity: Navigating elderly fandom and intergenerational ‘creativity’ on Douyin within the shadow of the culture industry
This article examines how elderly audiences engage with internet celebrities on Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese equivalent) through the lens of the Frankfurt school – with Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, and Habermas’s critical theories towards the cultural industry. According to them, the culture industry’s mass-produced cultural goods promote conformity, suppress critical thought, and encourage passive consumption to benefit capitalism. This study foc…
The interplay between digital platforms and user-generated content in reinterpreting and recreating mythological narratives with traditional Chinese cultural elements: The animated series Yao-Chinese …
This paper critically unpacks the reinvigoration of mythological narratives with traditional Chinese cultural elements on 哔哩哔哩Bilibili using the animated series 中国奇谭 Zhongguo Qitan ‘Yao-Chinese Folktales’, specifically focusing on the narrative 小妖怪的夏天 Xiao Yaoguai De Xiatian ‘Nobody’ (Lit. ‘A Little Monster’s Summer’) as the case study. The article explores Bilibili’s unique digital ecosystem and user-generated content, shedding light on how they…
The platformization of socially constructed gender realities: The ‘Fat Cat incident’ (2024)
From live-streaming to memes: An exploratory study of the Chinese abstract culture as a structure of feeling among Chinese youth
The abstract culture is a youth subculture characterized by the incomprehensible, vulgar, and even abusive presentations of live streamers in China. Through online viewers’ second creation, remixing, and dissemination of these presentations, the live streamers become memes widely recognized by Chinese young generations. This subculture started catching netizens’ attention with the establishment of the Abstract Studio from the game live- streamers…
When Motherhood Meets Social Media: Understanding China’s Childbearing Phobia Through the Social Amplification of Risk Framework
Digital Vigilantism and Chinese Digital Feminisms: The Shi Hang Case and the Double-Edged Sword of Online Justice-Seeking
Linguistic Performance and Feminist Resistance: Exploring Digital Identity and Gender Fluidity in the Yu-C Community
A phenomenology study of transmedia museum storytelling and gamification through XR technologies
Chinese Homosexuals in a Utopianised World: Active Involvement, Strategic Interactions, and Contingent Engagement with Practical Life
Boys' Love (BL), known as Danmei () in China, is a popular female-oriented male-male intimacy genre celebrated by today's Chinese younger generation. From 2000 to 2020, BL fiction rapidly developed, becoming a major expression of male homosexuality and homoeroticism in China. This research detects the dynamics between BL fiction's utopianized space and gay readers-a community simultaneously being the major subject of BL representation and the min…
Transforming knowledge through practice: Improving Chinese students' understanding of theoretical and conceptual approaches in documentary studies
The article seeks to understand how the application of theoretical approaches in documentary filmmaking improves students’ conceptual and analytical skills. Through the delivery of a theoretically orientated documentary module, the motivation of the study emerges from the authors’ own observations that the integration of practice can support students to better conceptualise theoretical approaches. Notably, the module is delivered at a Sino-Britis…
Can the farmers speak? The paradox of the subaltern narrative in Return to Dust
This article examines 隐入尘烟 Yinru Chenyan ‘Return to Dust’ (2022) (henchforth Dust), directed by Li Ruijun, as a powerful critique of rural marginalization and socio-economic inequities in contemporary China. The film illustrates the hardships faced by Ma Youtie and Cao Guiying, representing rural individuals marginalized by prevailing urban narratives and enduring institutional neglect and exploitation. Using narrative analysis and building on th…
Coping with gender-critical voices from within: A sociocognitive approach to Sussex’s Twitter (X) crisis responses
Drawing on critical discourse studies (CDS), this article foregrounds how British higher education institutions respond to gender-critical controversies sparked by their staff members. Adopting Teun van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach, we analyse the University of Sussex’s crisis responses on Twitter (known as X today) concerning de-platforming campaigns against Kathleen Stock. The analysis unpacks how Sussex employs various discursive strategies …
From Ancient Zhiguai Tales to Contemporary Animation: A Study of Visual Rhetoric in ‘Yao-Chinese Folktales’ (2023)
This study delves into the use of visual rhetorical strategies in 中国奇谭 Zhongguo Qitan ‘Yao-Chinese Folktales’ (2023), particularly focusing on 鹅鹅鹅 E E E ‘Goose Mountain’ (henceforth ‘Goose’) directed by Hu Rui. We assert that ‘Goose’ transcodes and reinterprets the ancient Chinese zhiguai novella 阳羡书生 Yangxian Shusheng ‘The Scholar from Yangxian’ (henceforth ‘Scholar’) for a contemporary audience through the use of visual rhetoric, leading to a c…
Representations of Post-Industrial Shanghai: Industrial Chronotopes in Documentary Photography
This article explores how vernacular aesthetics have been re-appropriated from pictorial to modern documentary photography over the past century to instigate a modern collective imagination of the industrial disintegration in the Chinese urban milieu. Within the scope of a discursive visual process, Jean Philippe Gauvrit (b.1963) documents the departure of the industrial urban society in his photo-essay Shanghai in JP Gauvrit (2008). The paper cl…
Revisiting a de-Humanized Shanghai: Speculative Realism in Zhou Ming’s Contemporary Object-Oriented Materialist Documentary Photography
This paper explores the cultural operations of Zhou Ming's photography (b.1960), which was aimed at exploring the deeper changes that have gripped the unstoppable urban renewal of Shanghai. His photo-essay Shanghai: An Alternative View (2000–2005), showcases the absurd and incongruous organic and inorganic spaces devoted to new points of view about the ruins that lay behind an assortment of high inner-city density residential areas situated in th…
The fluidity of soft power in YouTube’s broadcast of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games
In an era of heightened geopolitical tension, marked by a dynamic power shift between the West and China, the 2022 Winter Olympic Games emerged as a focal point of diplomatic contention. Several Western nations signalled their dissent through diplomatic boycotts, while China, conversely, seized this platform to strategically enhance its soft power. This paper explores how the Chinese government utilized the 2022 Winter Olympic Games’ opening cere…
State feminism with Chinese characteristics: The inextricable link between women’s political representation and political episteme in contemporary China (2013–2023)
Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai: Querying the Strange Tales
Discourses of Heteronormativity and Power: The Ethical Position of Confucianism on Same-Sex Behaviour in China
This article investigates the beliefs of Confucianism-China's authoritative philosophy-regarding same-sex behavior, by examining Confucian canonical texts-either directly or through the interpretations of other scholars-and the scholarly literature on the relationship between the Confucian ethics and same-sex behavior. Additionally, this article explores the empirical research and media focusing on the lives of Chinese homosexuals to ascertain wh…
An analysis of cultural dissemination and national image construction in Chinese influencer Li Ziqi’s vlogs and its impact on international viewer perceptions on YouTube
International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-ge…
Understanding the Russian invasion of Ukraine through a gendered prism
This essay offers a timely analysis of how the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian warfare is observed in China through a gendered prism. Accounting for an anti-West axis in China’s current political climate, we articulate how misogyny and nationalism converge in Chinese social media users’ discussions about the military crisis currently unfolding in East Europe. This is revealed by a vulgar interpretation of the Russo-Ukrainian relationship and the sexualisati…
State feminism with Chinese characteristics: The inextricable link between women’s political representation and political episteme in contemporary China (2013–2023)
Contemporizing the National Style in Chinese Animation: The Case of Nezha (2019)
In this article, the authors explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifies the ‘national style’. Expanding the work of other scholars who have demonstrated the changeability of the ‘national style’, here they examine this notion in regard to the way in which Nezha (2019) represents ‘Chineseness’ at this particular socio-political moment. Methodologically, they focus their analysis largely upon the film’s narrativ…
Becoming-Perverse: Queering Sworn Brotherhood in the Non/Human Realm of Songzhuxuan'sHailiwa and Daokousu
This article examines the pornographic representation of Hailiwa and Daokousu, from Songzhuxuan's novel Yaohu Yanshi, where a sworn brotherhood incorporates an egalitarian homosexual relationship, something highly unusual in the Qing context in which sexual acts, including same-sex ones, were intelligible only via unequal hierarchies. In so doing we explore the queer potentialities of sworn brotherhood, signifying fraternity, friendship and a sex…
Content and Discourse Analysis of Cruelty towards Stray Dogs as Presented in Chinese Social Media
After recent reports emerged of a third arson attack on stray dog kennels in China’s Shandong province, those who have shown both hostility towards and support for the dogs and others involved in this event on Chinese social media have appeared. By analyzing posts and user attitudes on China’s Weibo and Baidu Tieba towards such kinds of media reports of stray dog cruelty, this article answers what the differing outlooks are on cruelty to stray do…
Digital Vigilantism and Chinese Digital Feminisms: The Shi Hang Case and the Double-Edged Sword of Online Justice-Seeking
From Countryside to Cyberspace: The Cruel Optimism of Live Streaming for China’s Rural Gay Men
The Face of the Nonhuman: Human-Animal Encounters in Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi
In this article, we expand the scholarly investigation of the representation of nonhuman animals (henceforth, “animals”) in historic literature, specifically focusing upon Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi [Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio]. This is partially a response to other scholars who argue that blurred boundaries between human and nonhuman in this genre challenge anthropocentrism by rendering humans and animals as basically the same. This p…
Male Homosexuality and Foxes in Ji Yun’s Zhiguai Collection Tales of the Thatched Cottage
Becoming-Woman in Pu Songling’s Strange Tales
This article examines the animal–human erotic encounters in Pu Songling’s strange [ zhiguai 志怪] tales, using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theories of becoming-woman and affect to think through several intersecting kinds of otherness, including the queer, the woman, the animal, and the strange. Zhiguai is a genre of writing that features ghosts, magical animal–human shapeshifting, dreams that intervene in reality, and other supernatural cha…
Content and Discourse Analysis of Cruelty towards Stray Dogs as Presented in Chinese Social Media
After recent reports emerged of a third arson attack on stray dog kennels in China’s Shandong province, those who have shown both hostility towards and support for the dogs and others involved in this event on Chinese social media have appeared. By analyzing posts and user attitudes on China’s Weibo and Baidu Tieba towards such kinds of media reports of stray dog cruelty, this article answers what the differing outlooks are on cruelty to stray do…
The Face of the Nonhuman: Human-Animal Encounters in Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi
In this article, we expand the scholarly investigation of the representation of nonhuman animals (henceforth, “animals”) in historic literature, specifically focusing upon Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi [Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio]. This is partially a response to other scholars who argue that blurred boundaries between human and nonhuman in this genre challenge anthropocentrism by rendering humans and animals as basically the same. This p…
The Rite of Passage and Digital Mourning in Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary
Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social med…
Love, Friendship, Fraternity, and Sexual Pleasure Between Men in Pu Songling’s Qing Dynasty Tale Huang Jiulang (c. 1740)
Contemporizing the National Style in Chinese Animation: The Case of Nezha (2019)
In this article, the authors explore the popular animation Nezha (2019), examining the idea that it typifies the ‘national style’. Expanding the work of other scholars who have demonstrated the changeability of the ‘national style’, here they examine this notion in regard to the way in which Nezha (2019) represents ‘Chineseness’ at this particular socio-political moment. Methodologically, they focus their analysis largely upon the film’s narrativ…
Calling for a Hero: The Displacement of the Nezha Archetypal Image from Chinese Animated Film Nezha Naohai (1979) to New Gods: Nezha Reborn (2021)
Double Consciousness of Chinese Modernity: In the Cosmopolitan Ruins of Shanghai
Manufacturing and Commodifying “Chineseness”
With the proliferation of cultural and creative industries in China, the Internet Plus economy has turned millions of young people Chinese into entrepreneurial and digital prosumers. In tandem, multi-channel network has become a new business model to scout, train, package and promote online micro-celebrities into ‘natural and authentic’ spokespersons for self-branded products and services, who also play an important role in shaping national and c…
Unboxing the Chinese Blind Boxes among China’s grown-up missing children: Probabilistic and elastic prosumption through mediated collection, exchange and resale of figurines
This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China within globalisation and the ‘media-mix’ fandom, which is to consume and resell media merchandise in opaque packages as probability goods. We re-centre the focus of fandom studies on the then much neglected ‘missing child’ and now the ‘emerging adult’ in a globalising world. We argue the Chinese emerging adult consumes, collects and resells Blind Boxes …
An analysis of cultural dissemination and national image construction in Chinese influencer Li Ziqi’s vlogs and its impact on international viewer perceptions on YouTube
International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-ge…
Understanding the Russian invasion of Ukraine through a gendered prism
This essay offers a timely analysis of how the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian warfare is observed in China through a gendered prism. Accounting for an anti-West axis in China’s current political climate, we articulate how misogyny and nationalism converge in Chinese social media users’ discussions about the military crisis currently unfolding in East Europe. This is revealed by a vulgar interpretation of the Russo-Ukrainian relationship and the sexualisati…
Investigating Media Coverage and Public Perceptions of the HPV Vaccine in China – A Content Analysis of Weibo Posts
Becoming-Perverse: Queering Sworn Brotherhood in the Non/Human Realm of Songzhuxuan'sHailiwa and Daokousu
This article examines the pornographic representation of Hailiwa and Daokousu, from Songzhuxuan's novel Yaohu Yanshi, where a sworn brotherhood incorporates an egalitarian homosexual relationship, something highly unusual in the Qing context in which sexual acts, including same-sex ones, were intelligible only via unequal hierarchies. In so doing we explore the queer potentialities of sworn brotherhood, signifying fraternity, friendship and a sex…
Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai: Querying the Strange Tales
Cashing the pink RMB through docile bodies: Queering paradox of erotic entrepreneurs on Chinese social media platforms
This article investigates the emergence of "erotic entrepreneurs" in China, a new category of male influencers who engage in erotic activities and target followers of all genders on platforms such as TikTok/Douyin and Bilibili. Through ethnographic research, we examine how these young individuals strategically marketize their private and intimate experiences as a form of aspiration and commerce. We use Foucault’s concept, "docile bodies," to inte…
Re-Animating Chinese Myths
This chapter explores contemporary Chinese animation’s remediations of traditional myths and folklore, and the mobilization of these as mythologies (in the Barthian sense), within contemporary future-oriented notions of the “national style.” Of the major animated feature films and box-office successes over the past few years, it is significant that these all feature narratives and characters from Chinese mythology and folklore. To some extent, th…
The Impact of China’s Biopolitical Approach to Covid-19 on Pets
Using the frameworks of biopower and uses and gratification theory, this article examines the treatment of pets in China during the COVID-19 outbreak and the role of social media in fulfilling users’ social needs by facilitating discussions on associated animal welfare issues and mobilizing animal advocates to take action. The analysis focuses on how social media comments on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, have influenced public discour…
Reimagining Affection in a Changing Shanghai: A Rhizomatic Young Cartography of Birdhead’s Contemporary Photography
The article examines the dynamics of space surrounding Shanghai’s rampant urban change as experienced by the Chinese artistic duo known as Birdhead. Underpinned by the conceptual framework of the “affective turn”, this study reflects upon and addresses how the photographer’s chaotic photo-essay of Shanghai’s new state housing (Xincun, New Village, 2008) can function as a nexus of place-making. With a claim to impetuous emotion in his works, Birdh…
From Countryside to Cyberspace: The Cruel Optimism of Live Streaming for China’s Rural Gay Men
Discourses of Heteronormativity and Power: The Ethical Position of Confucianism on Same-Sex Behaviour in China
This article investigates the beliefs of Confucianism-China's authoritative philosophy-regarding same-sex behavior, by examining Confucian canonical texts-either directly or through the interpretations of other scholars-and the scholarly literature on the relationship between the Confucian ethics and same-sex behavior. Additionally, this article explores the empirical research and media focusing on the lives of Chinese homosexuals to ascertain wh…
Transforming knowledge through practice: Improving Chinese students' understanding of theoretical and conceptual approaches in documentary studies
The article seeks to understand how the application of theoretical approaches in documentary filmmaking improves students’ conceptual and analytical skills. Through the delivery of a theoretically orientated documentary module, the motivation of the study emerges from the authors’ own observations that the integration of practice can support students to better conceptualise theoretical approaches. Notably, the module is delivered at a Sino-Britis…
Can the farmers speak? The paradox of the subaltern narrative in Return to Dust
This article examines 隐入尘烟 Yinru Chenyan ‘Return to Dust’ (2022) (henchforth Dust), directed by Li Ruijun, as a powerful critique of rural marginalization and socio-economic inequities in contemporary China. The film illustrates the hardships faced by Ma Youtie and Cao Guiying, representing rural individuals marginalized by prevailing urban narratives and enduring institutional neglect and exploitation. Using narrative analysis and building on th…
Coping with gender-critical voices from within: A sociocognitive approach to Sussex’s Twitter (X) crisis responses
Drawing on critical discourse studies (CDS), this article foregrounds how British higher education institutions respond to gender-critical controversies sparked by their staff members. Adopting Teun van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach, we analyse the University of Sussex’s crisis responses on Twitter (known as X today) concerning de-platforming campaigns against Kathleen Stock. The analysis unpacks how Sussex employs various discursive strategies …
Sociology (34 works) · Art (23 works) · Political science (21 works) · Aesthetics (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Psychology (18 works) · China (15 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Media studies (14 works)