Proceedings of The 6th Global Conference on Women’s Studies
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Examining Gender Tensions in Conjunction with Racial Stereotypes: Differences in Attitudes Towards Interracial Couples Among Chinese Social Media Users
Xinyue Zheng, Xuan Wang, Yuxia Zhan
ABSTRACT:
Amid the burgeoning discussions on gender across Chinese social media, content concerning interracial couples garners heightened scrutiny and engenders robust debate, entwined with societal phenomena such as racial stereotypes and dowry practices. Despite the prominence of such discussions, academic inquiries that simultaneously address the intersections of gender and race are notably scant. Moreover, scholarly endeavors within the Chinese milieu typically concentrate on disciplines such as literature and law, with cultural and media studies receiving minimal attention. This paper endeavors to elucidate the attitudes and perspectives of Chinese social media users concerning the confluence of gender and race, exploring how racial stereotypes perpetuate patriarchal discourse and the modalities through which counter-discourses are cultivated and manifested. Employing three predominant social media platforms in China—Douyin, Kuaishou, and RED—as focal points, this investigation utilizes computational communication research methods to extract and analyze 2,800 pertinent comments from the top three most engaged posts about interracial couples, with a dual focus on gender and race. This qualitative analysis leverages the Chinese sentiment corpus from Dalian University of Technology and employs grounded theory. Results indicate pronounced disparities in the perspectives of male and female users towards interracial relationships on these platforms. Male users demonstrate acute sensitivity to topics such as African American and Caucasian male partners, as well as issues related to the bride price, which are intricately connected to the economic underpinnings and sexual anxieties inherent in Chinese patriarchal narratives. Conversely, female engagement with these subjects overtly challenges patriarchal norms, which also reflects the significant cyber-feminism in China. Through an integrative approach combining qualitative research and discourse analysis, this paper delves into the nuanced expressions of fragile masculinity among Chinese male social media users and their cultural derivations. Furthermore, it discusses the pervasive gender tension evident within the contemporary Chinese social media landscape, as reflected in the divergent attitudes of male and female users. This study also furnishes empirical data pertinent to the investigation of the feminist movement within China’s digital sphere. Furthermore, it enriches the broader discourse on the interplay of gender, race, and media within the Chinese sociocultural context.
keywords: Gender Studies, Social Media Studies, Patriarchal Discourse in China, Cyber-feminism in China