Algorithms, bullet screens, and Chinese academic stars
The making of Bilibili’s influencer-professors
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24242486 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kezheng Chen (0000-0001-6659-2078, Wuhan University), Xinzhong Chen (0000-0003-1160-7759, Wuhan University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-22 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Celebrity Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1939-2397 • E-ISSN: 1939-2400 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/19392397.2026.2747724 |
| OpenAlex | W7223318608 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 40 |
This study theorises the wanghong jiaoshou (internet-celebrity professor) as a distinct form of professional celebrity emerging from China’s platform ecology. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 12 Bilibili scholar-creators, we investigate how academic authority is negotiated through the platform’s specific techno-cultural affordances: bullet-screen comments (danmu), the gamified ‘One-Click Triple’ economy, and state-endorsed science popularisation (kepu) norms. Through an integrated framework synthesising boundary work, Bourdieu’s capital theory, and celebrity studies, we identify a tripartite typology of digital boundary work – expansive, protective, and blurring – as the mechanism through which scholars accumulate composite platformised authority. This authority is conceptualised as a dynamic product of cross-field capital conversion among Institutional, Attention, and Affective Capital. Our findings reveal how calculated intimacy and algorithmic collegiality reshape scholarly persona, while highlighting tensions between rigour and virality, institutional autonomy and platform dependency. The article extends celebrity studies by contextualising professional celebrity within digital China and redefining celebrity capital as relational, platform-specific, and constantly renegotiated at the intersection of academic, commercial, and state logics.
academic authority · academic autonomy · Bilibili · Bourdieu's theory of capital · Chinese academia · danmu · science popularisation · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media and Digital Communication · Social and Cultural Dynamics
The Costs of Connection
Affective Publics
Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture
The Platform Society
Thematic Analysis
Microcelebrity and the Branded Self
Live-streaming, games and politics of gender performance
Heavenly Bodies
Mainstreaming wanghong in the international press discourse
“High energy ahead!”
The education influencer
Digital Sociology
Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok
Understanding Celebrity
Ordinary People and the Media
For Public Sociology
Reassembling the Social
The Logic of Practice
Algorithm literacy as a moderator of media trust
From teachers to influencers
Institutional Ecology, `Translations' and Boundary Objects
Fan Cultures
System of Professions
The politics of 'platforms
To See and Be Seen
Meat, Mask, Burden`
Playing to the Crowd
The art of attracting attention
Chinese celebrity and Wanghong economy
Self-branding, 'micro-celebrity' and the rise of Social Media Influencers
Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science
Imagined Affordance
The Platformization of the Web
The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences
Celebrity capital
| Highly cited | No |
|---|