Negotiating Digital Visibility: Coded Vernaculars and Affective Solidarity in Douban Feminist Community

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11. Media, Digital Platforms, and Gendered Politics

Abstract

This study focus on everyday tactics of Douban feminist groups, and how platform functions are promoting their affective solidarity. The research employs the lens of social media affordance to understand the function possibilities provided by Douban. The key concept is “platform vernacular”, which describes the unique grammars and discursive styles that emerge within specific digital environments. This study draws on the theory of affective solidarity to explore how shared emotional resonances are transformed into social bonds. It shifts the focus from what these communities are to what they do emotionally to survive in hostile digital atmospheres.

The methodology adopts a qualitative approach with two-phase research design: Phase 1 Digital Ethnography and Phase 2 Semi-structured Interviews. The preliminary results find that the creative use of homophones, abbreviations, and emojis by feminist users constitutes a vital “emotional infrastructure”. These platform vernaculars are not merely tools for avoiding censorship, they facilitate a form of affective intimacy. The collective use of reverse platform functions, specifically blocking and reporting, as a way of generating “negative solidarity”, where a community is strengthened through the shared resistance from external threats.

Author

• Zhaorong Feng, City St George's, University of London