Search

China’s showroom livestreaming is highly gender-segregated, in which young women working as showroom livestreamers are often stigmatized and criticized as hypersexual or vulgar. Situating female streamers’ practices in the sociocultural environment of contemporary China and comparing them to other wanghongcreators such as fashion or beauty bloggers in China’s digital economy, we investigate how female streamers construct a particular type of gendered entrepreneurial subjectivity. In this research, we selected 90 short videos that are produced by three female streamers on the social media platform Douyin to examine their self-representations and discursive practices around showroom livestreaming production. In the analysis, we unravel three major interconnected narratives: enduring the behind-the-screen hardship of livestreaming is worthy; navigating heterosexual relationships with viewers is part of showroom livestreaming work; and professional skills and knowhow are provided for those who truly aspire to success. These narratives commonly form a discourse of showroom livestreaming as good work for ordinary working-class or underclass women to achieve social and economic advancement in contemporary China. Moreover, these narratives render young women as autonomous agents with free choices to hustle in the world of showroom livestreaming, normalizing the precarious working conditions as well as gender power imbalances.

Precarious careers in the games industry have long relied on the unpaid and largely feminized support of spouses and family members. This paper addresses the role of spouses and other domestic cohabitants in the production of live game broadcasts on Twitch, Amazon’s world-leading platform in live video entertainment. I introduce the heuristic of the ‘Twitch Spouse’ to underscore the crucial role that domestic partners have played as invisible workers in the wider games industry, whose precarious conditions have been extended by the rise of at-home livestreaming. Drawing from ‘playful’ interviews and ethnographic observation with 12 Twitch creators located across the United States and Canada, I delineate three themes by which the partners of Twitch streamers vitally contribute to livestreaming: collaborative space production, the management of intimacy, and timekeeping. Herein, I show how a theorization of the ‘Twitch Spouse’ will build future pathways for recognizing the intertwined struggles of domestic and digital work within the precarious horizons of the game industry. This paper argues that Twitch streamers’ conceptualizations of intimate partners’ supportive labour reinforce domesticity and visibility as co-extended forces in the evolving relevance of digital labour to contemporary capitalism.

This study explores the development of Chinese feminist media by presenting a case study of a leading feminist media account, Way to Non-Violence (WTNV) (Jieshu baoli zhi lu). Utilizing Shoemaker and Reese’s Hierarchical Model, this study analyzes the factors shaping and constraining WTNV’s development, and investigates the strategies WTNV deploys to meet its objectives amidst survival challenges. We carried out in-depth interviews with WTNV’s staff members and contributors, observed their online meetings, and conducted thematic analyses of 1,331 WTNV’s posts. We identify the influencing factors at five levels, specifically organizational level (WTNV), routines level (WTNV’s daily operational practices), individual level (the staff and contributors), social system level (censorship and content regulation, misogyny patriarchy culture and anti-feminism), and extra-media level (economic pressures). We find that caught between ambition and reality, WTNV maintains a moderate and inclusive feminist stance, deploys survival tactics, keeps a low profile, and continues to advocate feminist ideas. This study offers feminist media scholars and practitioners insight into how political and cultural factors, organizational attributes and routines, and individual agency collectively shape feminist media in the Chinese context.

Drawing from seven months of fieldwork among independent artists and their communities in Guangzhou, China, in 2020–2021, this paper investigates the feminist alternative practices in response to the experiences of gender marginalisation of independent artists. Along with being sexualised and discouraged by some of their art colleagues and the public, there has been an emergence of alternative practices among female independent artists in Guangzhou, including alternative art production, space cultivation, and community development. Alternative art practices have not only diversified the expression and representation of female artists; they have also helped female and non-binary people connect to discuss gender-related issues and provide mutual support. Altogether, these expanding feminist practices, spaces, and communities have yielded everyday life strategies to negotiate and contest existing patriarchal conventions and imbalanced power relationships. My account also offers a view of changing gender politics within art communities in Guangzhou’s independent art field.