Wounded mothers, platformed pain
Victimized motherhood in China’s platformed creator economy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19224330 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Qingyue Sun (0000-0002-5566-781X, Coastal Carolina University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-04-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Media & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14614448261439292 |
| OpenAlex | W7154849271 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 25 |
This article examines how mom creators on Xiaohongshu articulate maternal pain and reproductive suffering as a form of digital victimhood. I conceptualize these articulations as victimized motherhood, a platform-mediated mode of maternal subjectivity that operates at the intersection of political critique, platform governance, and creator economy. Victimized motherhood unfolds through three processes: politicizing pain, by framing maternal suffering as structural injustice; branding pain, by converting vulnerability into marketable personas and branding strategies; and platformizing pain, by translating embodied experiences into visually and emotionally resonant content aligned with platform visibility regimes. Rather than constituting a fixed political stance, victimized motherhood emerges as a contingent and constrained political expression shaped by state censorship, affective labor, and platform governance within China’s tightly regulated digital environment. This article extends digital motherhood scholarship and contributes to broader debates on the politics of victimhood and platform-mediated resistance in authoritarian contexts
Authoritarianism · Corporate governance · Embodied cognition · Framing (construction) · Persona · Politics · Scholarship · Subjectivity · Vulnerability (computing) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology
Researching Motherhood in the Age of Short Videos
The postfeminist entrepreneurial self and the platformisation of labour
Monetizing the mommy
Fabrication as Ethical Practice
Digital pioneers
From one-child policy to three-children initiative
Welcome to the Mommy Wars, Ladies”
Sisters, are you running out of menstrual supplies??”
The radical act of 'mommy blogging
The politics of vulnerability in the influencer economy
Ruined’ lives
Fertility fear” on Chinese social media
A Theory of Victimhood
From birth control to pronatalism
Victimhood
Escaping the spectacle? Young women's ambivalence to gender aesthetics on Xiaohongshu
Are we all influencers now? Feminist activists discuss the distinction between being an activist and an influencer
Unveiling the Contested Digital Feminism
Gendered social practices in reproductive health
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |