Altman Yuzhu Peng
Biographic Data
| ID | 295462 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Altman Yuzhu Peng |
| GIVEN NAMES | Altman Yuzhu |
| FAMILY NAME | Peng |
| SIGNATURE | PENG A Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3440-0761 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Expressing (distorted) dissent against the Party-state out of internalised racism on X
This article critically examines a troubling development in grassroots resistance to authoritarianism, which we term ‘distorted dissent’. Using the Great Translation Movement (GTM) as a case study, we explore how its coordinators mobilise affective claims to substantiate critiques of Chinese people’s national character, whilst leveraging X’s connective affordances to amplify their reach in the transnational digital sphere. Such affective claims s…
Manufacturing Racialised Misogyny in China’s Digital Manosphere
This article examines the consumption of WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) games within China’s sports fandom through a dual gender-racial lens, using celebrity basketball player Caitlin Clark as a case study. Drawing on a dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse studies, complemented by an intersectional lens on gender and racial injustices, we unpack how Chinese fans co-construct Clark as an ideal sportswoman on Hupu, …
Framing Nato in China during the 2022 war in Ukraine
This research elucidates the power dynamics of framing at the nexus of state, news media and netizens during international conflicts in China. The authors explore how three actors or stakeholders – namely, foreign policy apparatuses, the news media, and netizens – frame NATO in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Employing Entman’s cascading activation framing model, they discover that the dominant frames adopted by the government, the new…
Protesting the Party-State through Self-Racialisation: The Great Translation Movement and the Evolution of the National Character Discourse
This essay re-examines the Great Translation Movement (GTM) as an activist-journalistic initiative that challenges the authority of the Chinese Party-State by exposing its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Highlighting a problematic aspect of the GTM, it calls into question its oversimplified portrayal of the Chinese people, as it perpetuates national character discourse by attributing societal issues to perceived inherent traits of the p…
When TCM debate meets Covid-19 discourse: Identifying evidentiality in Chinese social-mediated communication
The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed medical discourse to the forefront of everyday communication, but limited scholarly attention has been given to its intersection with social-mediated language use in the Chinese context. From a corpus-pragmatic view, we examined textual data collected from Zhihu, the most popular Chinese community question-answering site. Our analysis focused on the linguistic mechanism of evidential expression in social-mediated …
Waging war on feminism through jiaoqi discourse: Chinese tradwife influencers on Douyin
Today, the ‘tradwife’ (traditional wife) aesthetic, often embodied by female influencers who celebrate returning to the domestic sphere, has gained popularity across Euro-American societies. Mirroring this phenomenon, a comparable jiaoqi (娇妻, meaning young, beautiful wife) aesthetic has emerged within China’s influencer economy, valorizing women’s withdrawal from public life. In this article, we draw on Teun van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach to …
Countering Nationalist Politics Through Distant Witnessing: An Affective-Discursive Approach
Advancing an affective-discursive approach, this article examines how distant witnessing bolsters digital activist organizing that challenges a Southern authoritarian regime's nationalist politics on international social media. The research foregrounds an initiative coordinated by a group of overseas dissidents who sought to expose China's foreign policy regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine on X (Twitter). Amid ongoing battlefield stalemates…
Gender Fluidity Versus Homohysteria: How Young Chinese Male Fans Consume Athletic Bromance
This article investigates how young Chinese male fans interpret and engage with mediated athletic bromances, drawing from interviews with university students who follow sports games closely. The research uncovers complex dynamics wherein these fans contextually embrace and delegitimise the homoerotic aspects of mediated athletic bromances as they navigate their sports consumption. This phenomenon reflects the multifaceted experiences of young men…
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 …
Weibo Feminism: Expression, Activism, and Social Media in China, written by Aviva Xue and Kate Rose
Curating activist journalism to defy China’s “mainstream” narrative on X (Twitter)
This article foregrounds the great translation movement (GTM), initially mobilised on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as an example of activist journalism countering China's 'mainstream' narrative of the war and its broader implications. Using Fairclough’s dialectical-relational approach, adapted to the specifics of social media communication, we examine GTM postings throughout the first calendar year of the w…
Sportswomen under the Chinese male gaze: A feminist critical discourse analysis
This article offers a timely, critical analysis of the male gaze upon sportswomen in male Chinese fans’ consumption of sporting megaevents. We use the most popular Chinese-language sports fandom platform, Hupu, as the data repository and scrutinise the threads of male Hupu users’ postings about two elite sportswomen at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as the case studies. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA), we elucidate the discursive …
When street protests meet feminist activism in the A4 Revolution
In China, small-scale, single-issue protests are occasionally observed, but widespread acts of civil disobedience have not been documented for many years. This record was broken in late November 2022 due to a building fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Allegedly, ten victims lost their lives as a consequence of the authorities’ extreme ‘dynamic-zero’ (动态清零, dòngtài qīnglíng) COVID-19 control measures, which hindered rescue efforts (Ong, 2023). The first s…
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…
From Countryside to Cyberspace: The Cruel Optimism of Live Streaming for China’s Rural Gay Men
Co-Constructing a Gender–State Entanglement in Canonical Three Kingdoms Fandom: A Discourse-Historical Approach
Adopting a discourse-historical approach (DHA), we analyse how male influencers and their followers co-construct a gender–state entanglement through social-mediated discussions about a mythologised historical figure, Zhuge Liang, on Bilibili. The analysis discovers that the historical figure is portrayed as a wen–wu masculinity archetype, whose imaginary is modified against current socio-cultural trends and intertextually linked to China’s nation…
A wen-wu Approach to Male Teenage Chinese Sports Fans' Heteronormative Interpretation of Masculinity
This article analyses how performatively heteronormative, male teenage Chinese fans consume sports games through the prism of masculinity, using secondary school students' engagement with the NBA (National Basketball Association) as a case study. Drawing on focus groups of twenty-three participants, we discover that male teenage sports fans constantly evoke elite NBA athletes as male ideals to define a desirable, heteronormative wen-wu masculinit…
A dialectical-relational approach to anti-trans sentiments on Hupu
As the first edition of the Olympics including transgender sportswomen, Tokyo 2020 brought trans-rights debates to the forefront of global sports spectatorship during the summer of 2021. In this article, we adopt a dialectical-relational approach to address how anti-trans sentiments unfold in male Chinese sports fans’ social-mediated communication. Based on textual analysis of posts retrieved from Hupu, the research reveals that anti-trans sentim…
Digital nationalism versus gender politics in post-reform China: Gender-issue debates on Zhihu
This article aims to determine how digital nationalism influences gender politics in the context of gender-issue debates on Chinese social media platforms. To this end, I present an original case study, collecting empirical data from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) website, Zhihu. By using a mixed-method research design, consisting of content analysis (CA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), I explored gender-issue …
Jacinda Ardern and the limits of gender on the Chinese-language Internet: A critical discourse analysis
This article explores Chinese Internet users’ discussions about Jacinda Ardern’s maternity leave in the wake of her being elected as the Prime Minister of New Zealand, based on an analysis of postings retrieved from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site—Zhihu. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), with the assistance of content analysis (CA), we reveal that Zhihu users’ assessments of Ardern’s electoral success …
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…
A Chinese feminist analysis of Chinese social media responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a three-pronged invasion of its southwest neighbor, Ukraine, from the north, east, and south, marking a devastating escalation of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The invasion immediately captured global media attention. Political scientists, such as Maria Repnikova and Wendy Zhou (2022), quickly noted that the Russian side appears to be enjoying official and popular support from China. However, while th…
Why Do People Choose Different Social Media Platforms? Linking Use Motives With Social Media Affordances and Personalities
Drawing on uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, the current research investigates how social media users exploit different media affordances to satisfy their motives and how such motives are shaped by their personalities. A cross-sectional survey among college students ( N = 190) was conducted to examine their most frequently used social media platforms, use motives, and perceived media affordances. Their personalities were also assessed along t…
Amplification of regional discrimination on Chinese news portals: An affective critical discourse analysis
Regional discrimination is a significant social issue that leads to divided societies. In China, people from Henan Province, who are verbally abused by non-Henan users on the Internet, are often victims of regional discrimination. This article presents a case study of Chinese Internet users’ discriminatory practice against Henan people in the commentary sections of two major Chinese news portals – Tencent and NetEase. By advancing an affective cr…
Traditional Chinese medicine works: A politicised scientific debate in the Covid-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic provoked public attention to medical treatments across the world. In China, a debate on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) took place amid the government’s active promotion of it for COVID-19 patients. Rather than addressing such a debate from the perspective of medical science or health communication, this paper explores how TCM was politicised on Chinese social media. The research is based on a case study, …
Neoliberal feminism, gender relations, and a feminized male ideal in China: A critical discourse analysis of Mimeng ’s WeChat posts
A large body of literature has explored the interplay between neoliberal feminism and womanhood. However, little existing scholarship has tackled the impact of neoliberal feminism on women’s perception of manhood. This article presents a case study of Mimeng, an iconic Key Opinion Leader (KOL) using social media, such as WeChat, to engage with Chinese women. I employ a critical discourse analysis (CDA) method to investigate how Mimeng uses a neol…
She uses men to boost her career”: Chinese digital cultures and gender stereotypes of female academics in Zhihu discourses
Portrayed by the media as the story of “how a female PhD juggles intimate relationship with four male PhD academics”, the LM incident, named after the female main character of the story, was a high-profile case, which provoked public debates on Chinese social media in 2019. In this article, we explore how the stereotyping of female PhDs plays out in Chinese Internet users’ discussions about the LM incident. We collected a total of 632 relevant po…
A techno-feminist analysis of beauty app development in China's high-tech industry
Drawing on a techno-feminist approach, this article foregrounds the socio-technological process of beauty app development in China’s high-tech industry. I conducted semi-structured interviews with ten professionals, six women and four men, who previously worked at a leading Chinese high-tech company and participated in the development of a pioneer, popular beauty app – BeautyCam (Meiyan Xiangji). The research findings reveal that Chinese high-tec…
Sharing food photographs on social media: Performative Xiaozi lifestyle in Young, middle-class Chinese urbanites' WeChat 'Moments
Sharing food photographs on social media is on the rise. This act has become increasingly popular in younger generation urban Chinese users’ everyday use of WeChat, the popular social media application. In this article, I argue that self-presentation provides an angle to understand aspects of young, middle-class urbanites’ food-photograph sharing. This article comprises an eight-month project, conducting netnographic research of 16 young, middle-…
Why Do People Choose Different Social Media Platforms? Linking Use Motives With Social Media Affordances and Personalities
Drawing on uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, the current research investigates how social media users exploit different media affordances to satisfy their motives and how such motives are shaped by their personalities. A cross-sectional survey among college students ( N = 190) was conducted to examine their most frequently used social media platforms, use motives, and perceived media affordances. Their personalities were also assessed along t…
Gender Essentialism in Chinese Reality TV: A Case Study of You Are So Beautiful
This article provides a feminist analysis of Chinese reality TV, using the recent makeover show— You Are So Beautiful (你怎么这么好看) as a case study. I argue that the notion of gender essentialism is highlighted in the production of You Are So Beautiful , which distances the Chinese show from its original American format— Queer Eye . This phenomenon is indicative of how existing gender power relations influence the production of popular cultural texts…
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…
A Chinese feminist analysis of Chinese social media responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a three-pronged invasion of its southwest neighbor, Ukraine, from the north, east, and south, marking a devastating escalation of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The invasion immediately captured global media attention. Political scientists, such as Maria Repnikova and Wendy Zhou (2022), quickly noted that the Russian side appears to be enjoying official and popular support from China. However, while th…
Post-reform gender politics: How do Chinese Internet users portray Theresa May on Zhihu
This article analyses Chinese Internet users’ discussions about the former UK Prime Minister—Theresa May. We gathered data from China’s most popular community question-answering (CQA) site—Zhihu and analysed how Chinese Internet users discuss May. The research findings suggest that Chinese Internet users often deploy gendered discourses in discussing May and that these gendered discourses often contain sub-textual commentary on international poli…
Sportswomen under the Chinese male gaze: A feminist critical discourse analysis
This article offers a timely, critical analysis of the male gaze upon sportswomen in male Chinese fans’ consumption of sporting megaevents. We use the most popular Chinese-language sports fandom platform, Hupu, as the data repository and scrutinise the threads of male Hupu users’ postings about two elite sportswomen at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as the case studies. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA), we elucidate the discursive …
Digital nationalism versus gender politics in post-reform China: Gender-issue debates on Zhihu
This article aims to determine how digital nationalism influences gender politics in the context of gender-issue debates on Chinese social media platforms. To this end, I present an original case study, collecting empirical data from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) website, Zhihu. By using a mixed-method research design, consisting of content analysis (CA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), I explored gender-issue …
Boris Johnson in hospital: A Chinese gaze at Western democracies in the Covid-19 pandemic
In this article, we examine Chinese assessments of Western democratic systems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is based on an up-to-date case study of how Chinese Internet users discussed the UK Prime Minister - Boris Johnson's infection with COVID-19 in late March and early April 2020. The research collected original data from the Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site - Zhihu. Using a mixed-method approach, consis…
Gender Fluidity Versus Homohysteria: How Young Chinese Male Fans Consume Athletic Bromance
This article investigates how young Chinese male fans interpret and engage with mediated athletic bromances, drawing from interviews with university students who follow sports games closely. The research uncovers complex dynamics wherein these fans contextually embrace and delegitimise the homoerotic aspects of mediated athletic bromances as they navigate their sports consumption. This phenomenon reflects the multifaceted experiences of young men…
Co-Constructing a Gender–State Entanglement in Canonical Three Kingdoms Fandom: A Discourse-Historical Approach
Adopting a discourse-historical approach (DHA), we analyse how male influencers and their followers co-construct a gender–state entanglement through social-mediated discussions about a mythologised historical figure, Zhuge Liang, on Bilibili. The analysis discovers that the historical figure is portrayed as a wen–wu masculinity archetype, whose imaginary is modified against current socio-cultural trends and intertextually linked to China’s nation…
A wen-wu Approach to Male Teenage Chinese Sports Fans' Heteronormative Interpretation of Masculinity
This article analyses how performatively heteronormative, male teenage Chinese fans consume sports games through the prism of masculinity, using secondary school students' engagement with the NBA (National Basketball Association) as a case study. Drawing on focus groups of twenty-three participants, we discover that male teenage sports fans constantly evoke elite NBA athletes as male ideals to define a desirable, heteronormative wen-wu masculinit…
A dialectical-relational approach to anti-trans sentiments on Hupu
As the first edition of the Olympics including transgender sportswomen, Tokyo 2020 brought trans-rights debates to the forefront of global sports spectatorship during the summer of 2021. In this article, we adopt a dialectical-relational approach to address how anti-trans sentiments unfold in male Chinese sports fans’ social-mediated communication. Based on textual analysis of posts retrieved from Hupu, the research reveals that anti-trans sentim…
Jacinda Ardern and the limits of gender on the Chinese-language Internet: A critical discourse analysis
This article explores Chinese Internet users’ discussions about Jacinda Ardern’s maternity leave in the wake of her being elected as the Prime Minister of New Zealand, based on an analysis of postings retrieved from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site—Zhihu. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), with the assistance of content analysis (CA), we reveal that Zhihu users’ assessments of Ardern’s electoral success …
Alipay adds “beauty filters” to face-scan payments: A form of patriarchal control over women’s bodies
In July 2019, the Chinese mobile payment application, Alipay launched a new update that incorporated “beauty filters” into its face-scan payment system. The “beauty filters,” which beautify users w
Framing Nato in China during the 2022 war in Ukraine
This research elucidates the power dynamics of framing at the nexus of state, news media and netizens during international conflicts in China. The authors explore how three actors or stakeholders – namely, foreign policy apparatuses, the news media, and netizens – frame NATO in the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Employing Entman’s cascading activation framing model, they discover that the dominant frames adopted by the government, the new…
Countering Nationalist Politics Through Distant Witnessing: An Affective-Discursive Approach
Advancing an affective-discursive approach, this article examines how distant witnessing bolsters digital activist organizing that challenges a Southern authoritarian regime's nationalist politics on international social media. The research foregrounds an initiative coordinated by a group of overseas dissidents who sought to expose China's foreign policy regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine on X (Twitter). Amid ongoing battlefield stalemates…
Curating activist journalism to defy China’s “mainstream” narrative on X (Twitter)
This article foregrounds the great translation movement (GTM), initially mobilised on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as an example of activist journalism countering China's 'mainstream' narrative of the war and its broader implications. Using Fairclough’s dialectical-relational approach, adapted to the specifics of social media communication, we examine GTM postings throughout the first calendar year of the w…
When street protests meet feminist activism in the A4 Revolution
In China, small-scale, single-issue protests are occasionally observed, but widespread acts of civil disobedience have not been documented for many years. This record was broken in late November 2022 due to a building fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang. Allegedly, ten victims lost their lives as a consequence of the authorities’ extreme ‘dynamic-zero’ (动态清零, dòngtài qīnglíng) COVID-19 control measures, which hindered rescue efforts (Ong, 2023). The first s…
From Countryside to Cyberspace: The Cruel Optimism of Live Streaming for China’s Rural Gay Men
Interface culture and gendered privacy risks in the context of Chinese locative social media use
Across the world, young people are increasingly using locative social media applications to socialize with strangers for dating opportunities. This phenomenon is also found in Chinese society, where such applications are very popular with young Chinese urbanites. This article presents a case study of how young Chinese urbanites navigate social interactions with strangers on WeChat People Nearby, based on the findings of interviews with 19 Chinese…
Neoliberal feminism, gender relations, and a feminized male ideal in China: A critical discourse analysis of Mimeng ’s WeChat posts
A large body of literature has explored the interplay between neoliberal feminism and womanhood. However, little existing scholarship has tackled the impact of neoliberal feminism on women’s perception of manhood. This article presents a case study of Mimeng, an iconic Key Opinion Leader (KOL) using social media, such as WeChat, to engage with Chinese women. I employ a critical discourse analysis (CDA) method to investigate how Mimeng uses a neol…
Sharing food photographs on social media: Performative Xiaozi lifestyle in Young, middle-class Chinese urbanites' WeChat 'Moments
Sharing food photographs on social media is on the rise. This act has become increasingly popular in younger generation urban Chinese users’ everyday use of WeChat, the popular social media application. In this article, I argue that self-presentation provides an angle to understand aspects of young, middle-class urbanites’ food-photograph sharing. This article comprises an eight-month project, conducting netnographic research of 16 young, middle-…
A Feminist Reading of China’s Digital Public Sphere
Alipay adds “beauty filters” to face-scan payments: A form of patriarchal control over women’s bodies
In July 2019, the Chinese mobile payment application, Alipay launched a new update that incorporated “beauty filters” into its face-scan payment system. The “beauty filters,” which beautify users w
Post-reform gender politics: How do Chinese Internet users portray Theresa May on Zhihu
This article analyses Chinese Internet users’ discussions about the former UK Prime Minister—Theresa May. We gathered data from China’s most popular community question-answering (CQA) site—Zhihu and analysed how Chinese Internet users discuss May. The research findings suggest that Chinese Internet users often deploy gendered discourses in discussing May and that these gendered discourses often contain sub-textual commentary on international poli…
Boris Johnson in hospital: A Chinese gaze at Western democracies in the Covid-19 pandemic
In this article, we examine Chinese assessments of Western democratic systems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is based on an up-to-date case study of how Chinese Internet users discussed the UK Prime Minister - Boris Johnson's infection with COVID-19 in late March and early April 2020. The research collected original data from the Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site - Zhihu. Using a mixed-method approach, consis…
Amplification of regional discrimination on Chinese news portals: An affective critical discourse analysis
Regional discrimination is a significant social issue that leads to divided societies. In China, people from Henan Province, who are verbally abused by non-Henan users on the Internet, are often victims of regional discrimination. This article presents a case study of Chinese Internet users’ discriminatory practice against Henan people in the commentary sections of two major Chinese news portals – Tencent and NetEase. By advancing an affective cr…
Traditional Chinese medicine works: A politicised scientific debate in the Covid-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic provoked public attention to medical treatments across the world. In China, a debate on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) took place amid the government’s active promotion of it for COVID-19 patients. Rather than addressing such a debate from the perspective of medical science or health communication, this paper explores how TCM was politicised on Chinese social media. The research is based on a case study, …
Gender and the privacy paradox in Chinese college students’ locative dating communication
This article explores the role gender plays in addressing the privacy paradox in the context of young Chinese people’s locative dating communication. Based on a case study of 19 Chinese college students, I explore differing privacy management strategies adopted by female and male participants in their use of WeChat People Nearby. This gendered phenomenon reveals how People Nearby works within patriarchal Chinese society to pose more privacy-relat…
Gender Essentialism in Chinese Reality TV: A Case Study of You Are So Beautiful
This article provides a feminist analysis of Chinese reality TV, using the recent makeover show— You Are So Beautiful (你怎么这么好看) as a case study. I argue that the notion of gender essentialism is highlighted in the production of You Are So Beautiful , which distances the Chinese show from its original American format— Queer Eye . This phenomenon is indicative of how existing gender power relations influence the production of popular cultural texts…
She uses men to boost her career”: Chinese digital cultures and gender stereotypes of female academics in Zhihu discourses
Portrayed by the media as the story of “how a female PhD juggles intimate relationship with four male PhD academics”, the LM incident, named after the female main character of the story, was a high-profile case, which provoked public debates on Chinese social media in 2019. In this article, we explore how the stereotyping of female PhDs plays out in Chinese Internet users’ discussions about the LM incident. We collected a total of 632 relevant po…
A techno-feminist analysis of beauty app development in China's high-tech industry
Drawing on a techno-feminist approach, this article foregrounds the socio-technological process of beauty app development in China’s high-tech industry. I conducted semi-structured interviews with ten professionals, six women and four men, who previously worked at a leading Chinese high-tech company and participated in the development of a pioneer, popular beauty app – BeautyCam (Meiyan Xiangji). The research findings reveal that Chinese high-tec…
Interface culture and gendered privacy risks in the context of Chinese locative social media use
Across the world, young people are increasingly using locative social media applications to socialize with strangers for dating opportunities. This phenomenon is also found in Chinese society, where such applications are very popular with young Chinese urbanites. This article presents a case study of how young Chinese urbanites navigate social interactions with strangers on WeChat People Nearby, based on the findings of interviews with 19 Chinese…
A dialectical-relational approach to anti-trans sentiments on Hupu
As the first edition of the Olympics including transgender sportswomen, Tokyo 2020 brought trans-rights debates to the forefront of global sports spectatorship during the summer of 2021. In this article, we adopt a dialectical-relational approach to address how anti-trans sentiments unfold in male Chinese sports fans’ social-mediated communication. Based on textual analysis of posts retrieved from Hupu, the research reveals that anti-trans sentim…
Digital nationalism versus gender politics in post-reform China: Gender-issue debates on Zhihu
This article aims to determine how digital nationalism influences gender politics in the context of gender-issue debates on Chinese social media platforms. To this end, I present an original case study, collecting empirical data from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) website, Zhihu. By using a mixed-method research design, consisting of content analysis (CA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), I explored gender-issue …
Jacinda Ardern and the limits of gender on the Chinese-language Internet: A critical discourse analysis
This article explores Chinese Internet users’ discussions about Jacinda Ardern’s maternity leave in the wake of her being elected as the Prime Minister of New Zealand, based on an analysis of postings retrieved from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site—Zhihu. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), with the assistance of content analysis (CA), we reveal that Zhihu users’ assessments of Ardern’s electoral success …
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…
A Chinese feminist analysis of Chinese social media responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a three-pronged invasion of its southwest neighbor, Ukraine, from the north, east, and south, marking a devastating escalation of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The invasion immediately captured global media attention. Political scientists, such as Maria Repnikova and Wendy Zhou (2022), quickly noted that the Russian side appears to be enjoying official and popular support from China. However, while th…
Why Do People Choose Different Social Media Platforms? Linking Use Motives With Social Media Affordances and Personalities
Drawing on uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, the current research investigates how social media users exploit different media affordances to satisfy their motives and how such motives are shaped by their personalities. A cross-sectional survey among college students ( N = 190) was conducted to examine their most frequently used social media platforms, use motives, and perceived media affordances. Their personalities were also assessed along t…
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…
From Countryside to Cyberspace: The Cruel Optimism of Live Streaming for China’s Rural Gay Men
Co-Constructing a Gender–State Entanglement in Canonical Three Kingdoms Fandom: A Discourse-Historical Approach
Adopting a discourse-historical approach (DHA), we analyse how male influencers and their followers co-construct a gender–state entanglement through social-mediated discussions about a mythologised historical figure, Zhuge Liang, on Bilibili. The analysis discovers that the historical figure is portrayed as a wen–wu masculinity archetype, whose imaginary is modified against current socio-cultural trends and intertextually linked to China’s nation…
A wen-wu Approach to Male Teenage Chinese Sports Fans' Heteronormative Interpretation of Masculinity
This article analyses how performatively heteronormative, male teenage Chinese fans consume sports games through the prism of masculinity, using secondary school students' engagement with the NBA (National Basketball Association) as a case study. Drawing on focus groups of twenty-three participants, we discover that male teenage sports fans constantly evoke elite NBA athletes as male ideals to define a desirable, heteronormative wen-wu masculinit…
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 …
Weibo Feminism: Expression, Activism, and Social Media in China, written by Aviva Xue and Kate Rose
Sociology (30 works) · Political science (27 works) · Gender Studies (22 works) · China (20 works) · Law (20 works) · Media studies (20 works) · Politics (17 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (16 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Law (12 works)