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This study aims to map out the popular phenomenon of misogyny in the specific techno-social configuration buttressed by China's state-market nexus. With a case study of a controversy involving the standup comedian Yang Li and the luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz on the microblogging platform Weibo, I highlight the 'platformization of misogyny.' The conceptualization refers to the way that a platform is evoked as tools to manufacture and amplify misogyny. Weibo has this effect both through its design, features, and algorithmic shaping of sociality and through its users' appropriation of its affordances. On top of that, the platform also engenders a form of governance that is deeply enmeshed in the commercialization of internet opinion, suggesting a techno-nationalist mode of state control that is exercised from afar and deeply imbued with patriarchal and misogynistic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study advances the understanding of consumer nationalism through an analysis of a Chinese boycott of South Korean goods. In early 2017, Chinese internet users expressed their strong aversion to the South Korean conglomerate Lotte and coordinated a folk boycott against it on the grounds that Lotte supported South Korea's deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system, which China considered a threat. We explored the increasing convergence of consumer activities in the form of consumer nationalism with commercial entities' marketing strategies and also with the state's interests with respect to security and promoting national pride. The internet and new technologies have facilitated grassroots nationalist activities in terms of the ready circulation of information and mobilization of collective actions. We investigated a digital discursive space in the communicative interactions among stakeholders through which digital media not only amplify the scale and intensity of the mundane and everyday practice of nationalism but also blur the boundaries among the participating actors. Our research documented the multilateral relationships among stakeholders – individual consumers/media users, commercial entities, and the state – in practicing nationalism and reproducing the nation through (non)consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I discuss the affective dynamics in Hong Kong's anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement through examining the emotion and affect surrounding four Lennon Walls in various parts of the city. The Lennon Walls—public spaces decorated with numerous colorful sticky notes—became a hallmark of the 2019 protests. Most of the notes were hand-written spontaneously by passers-by, who used words, phrases, emojis, sketches, and cartoons to communicate information about the protest, frame issues, stir emotions, and charge the movement with affective intensities. I argue that the walls galvanize the population to sense, feel, experience, and act in ways that foster political feelings. Combining textual analysis and ethnographic observations, I show that the walls mediate discursive emotional expressions and non-discursive affective intensities, illustrating the affective dynamics of the movement in terms of its temporality, visibility, and operationality—the concentrated formations of emotion and affect. Together, these orient and move us in social movements by allowing us to feel through our bodily reactions and affective responses and act upon these felt experiences. The walls are able to marshal the resources of the minds and bodies of those who created and sustained them and give rise to political passions and movement actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For this study, we analyzed the changing images of women characters involved in extramarital affairs in three Chinese TV dramas— Come and Go (CG ; Hubei TV & Guangxi TV, 1998), Dwelling Narrowness (DN ; Beijing TV & Dragon TV, 2009), and Nothing but Thirty (NT ; Dongfang TV & Tencent Video, 2020). We argue here that shifting gender relationships, evolving political, economic, and technological conditions relating to the media industry, and a transition in the broader social environment have motivated a return to patriarchal moral discourse on Chinese TV. Specifically, in keeping with this discourse, extramarital affairs have come to be presented as immoral, primarily for the women involved—the "little third" of the title, this being the literal translation of the Mandarin term for "mistress." We documented this return to patriarchal moral doctrines that are intended to discipline women and limit the diversity and nuance of culturally accepted forms and expressions of sexual attraction and romance on Chinese TV in case studies of the three programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a close reading of 1904 individual stories of sexual harassment collected through an online survey, the study investigates how storytelling constitutes a feminist media practice that (re)defines sexual harassment, exposes the power relations at play in the situations described in the stories, and opens up space for discursive politics in everyday life. In focusing on the active production of identities through discourse, we demonstrate how women themselves make sense of their experience. Most of the storytellers struggled to define what sexual harassment meant to them in their first-person narrations of their experiences. Guided by feminist standpoint methodology and narrative analysis, the study recognizes the narratives as powerful sites of knowledge production from a marginalized group of people who rarely speak out about their sexual harassment experiences, and it reconsiders the importance of the personal in digital space, evaluating how varied narratives can be cooperative and participatory to enact agency in contentious politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]