Feminist activism via social media in China

Ladies’ Character was a TV play idea posted by an ordinary Weibo user that went viral in 2018. Numerous social media users joined in uninvited, via crowdsourcing, to develop its plot about four single professional women in their 40’s. Earlier in the same year, “Love and Producer,” a cellphone game had been widely criticized for its derogatory depiction of women in a video advertisement. While these Internet events resembled feminist activism in both content and form, no participants identified themselves as feminists. Using virtual ethnography, this paper explores how grassroots social media users construct both opportunities and challenges for feminist development in China. As feminist activism is placed under strict censorship in China, the cultural space provided by social media becomes an important means for grassroots prosumers to put up their collective resistance. Although the participants did not identify themselves as feminists, they protested about media content for its stereotypical and insulting representations about women, and created their own stories, which elicited considerable responses from people. However, a stigmatized feminism has also been prolific online, and poses another challenge for anyone who raises voices for women, which to some extent explains why the participants disavow the term of feminism.