Description
The complex relationship between the state, digital platforms, and media users highlights the complexity and subtlety of feminist movements and gender politics in contemporary Chinese mediated discourse. My research will, through an everyday life perspective, empirically investigate how women's discourse and cultural narrative are produced and constructed on RedNote, a Chinese social media platform. RedNote is a user-centred “lifestyle platform” dominated by female users and a younger demographic, making it a key site for youth culture production and a powerful influence on young women in China.
Platforms have politics, prioritising particular values, ideas, forms of knowledge, products and consumption patterns, and their algorithms actively shape and engage with our contemporary everyday life. This research will investigate what feminist discourses and cultural narratives are constructed on RedNote, and how it embodies postfeminist sensibilities. It will further examine how these discourses and narratives are shaped by platform algorithms and investigate the visibility of algorithmic influence.
As an exploratory study, I am creating a research account on RedNote and conducting a one-year algorithmic ethnographic observation. I am focusing on the "Discover" page, which features algorithmically recommended content, and interacts with the platform's algorithmic recommendation system. To complement this, In-person semi-structured interviews will be conducted with female RedNote users to capture their subjective everyday experiences of platform use. By combining these two methods, this research aims to deepen the understanding of the emerging feminist discourse and cultural narratives in contemporary China and understand how “everyday” feminism narratives are algorithmically constructed.
