Sunday Onsite Presentation Session 1

Media & Journalism

Session Chair: Qingning Wang

09:30-09:55

70441 | Kathoey and Social Media Content Production: (Trans)gendering

Treepon Kirdnark, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Creative Labour in Thailand

The past decade has seen an increasing visibility of Thai transgender women (kathoey) in the social media realm. Many kathoey, a Thai colloquial term for transgender woman, ventured out into the platform economy by sharing self-produced content and hoping for monetary gains. Some achieved the status of social media influencers while content creators have become a lucrative career option globally. The emerging opportunity to acquire more capital is of significance especially when studies show that kathoey remain ostracized culturally and economically in Thai society. This paper will examine the growing, yet underexplored, kathoey social media influencers whose daily usage of media became a new form of work. Drawing on Marxist-inspired creative labour theories conceptualized from gender studies perspectives, this study examines the lived experience of kathoey influencers whose content production activities are intertwined with the global platform economy and the local socioeconomic structure. In-depth interviews of 12 notable and well-established kathoey social media influencers were conducted. Research questions that this research project poses include: 1) In what way do the Thai gender discourse and emerging form of platform works help define what it means to be kathoey creative labours?

2) To what extent can the kathoey creative labors negotiate with the stigmatized gender tropes through their daily works which involve community, creativity and commerciality?

09:55-10:20

70729 | Reversed Agenda-setting in the Xuzhou Chained Woman Incident: Dynamics Between Citizen Journalists, Mainstream Media, Netizens, and a Multi-levelled Government

Ho Man Tang, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Li Siyu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Chen Ziyu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Liu Yushan, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

States with centralized political power often censor journalism content and a softer version involves practices of framing and agenda-setting by newsroom senior editorial. The rise of social media and citizen journalism make censorship more porous. This research analyzes the interactions between official media and citizen journalism in the case of the Xuzhou chained woman incident in China. In January 2022, video of a mother in shabby condition chained in a hut next to a family with eight children went viral on Tiktok. Local officials responded to netizens’ concern stating that the woman is legitimately married, but was mentally ill and locked-up to avoid disturbing family members during Chinese New Year celebrations. However, citizen journalists (some are ex-journalists) actively investigated and reported potential evidence of human-trafficking. County-level officials denied. Mainstream media kept endorsing the mental-illness narrative and their reports were shared by national advocacy groups and unofficial government mouthpieces. Further investigations by citizen journalists showed inconsistencies with official statements and heightened public queries and discontent. The authorities arrested some citizen journalists, but ultimately coped with netizens’ rage by recognizing the problem of human-trafficking, distancing the responsibility of county-level with higher-level government, and taming social media frenzy by appreciating netizens’ concern as ‘care for society’. This research illustrates the dynamics between citizen and mainstream journalism, netizens, and a multi-levelled government, and has implications on the power of citizen journalists in reversed agenda-setting, how officials tame netizen discontent, and the negotiation of ‘proper’ online expression of public concern in social incidents.

10:20-10:45

70060

| Cancelling Nathan Chen on China’s Social Media: Acts of Online Nationalism or Wars Between Fans?

Qingning Wang, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

This presentation aims to unfold the controversies surrounding American figure skater Nathan Chen (陈巍) on China’s major social media platform Sina Weibo, during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Game. Chen won the golden medal for figure skating men's singles. But after the championship, major US news media, including the New York Times, CNN, Fox News and Bloomberg News reported the athletes was cold shouldered by Chinese social media users, despite he is of Chinese descent. The US media claimed the attitude was political, and were results of the on-going power struggle between the US and China, and increasingly dominate nationalism ideology in China. While this research will argue that such a claim was only partly accurate. In fact, communications surrounding Chen, reflected both politically and culturally contentions in China’s online public spaces. By presenting data collected through content analysis and network analysis, this paper will demonstrate that although online nationalism was a source contributed to the unfriendly attitudes towards Chen in online communications; another key reasons was conflicts in fan culture. While online nationalists attacked Chen because he had criticised China’s human right issues; some fans of figure skating disliked him since they were unconvinced of championship, and Chen’s unfavourable attitudes towards China offered them legitimate weapons to escalate the attacks.

10:45-11:10

69420 | Battle for the Mediaweight Belt: ‘YouTube Boxers’ and the Inter-mediatization of Social Media and Boxing Spectacles

Iain Macpherson,

Macewan University, Canada

Jack Skeffington, MacEwan University, Canada

This presentation reports a paper in progress on the recent rise to prominence of ‘YouTube influencers’ in professional boxing, most famously Logan and Jake Paul, to much outrage among fans and promoters of ‘real boxing.’ We’re examining this trend as the encroachment of one media system – YouTube, vloggers – onto another – more traditional boxing and its media – in terms of what this trend illuminates about relationships between mass/social media, sports, and society. Guided by mediatization theory, we argue this phenomenon takes the spectacle aspect of boxing to its ‘logical extreme,’ as a byproduct of the shift over decades in boxing (and, to lesser but growing degree, other televised sports) from ‘free-to-air’ mainstream TV broadcasting, towards ever more niche, and more lucrative, markets, first through pay-to-view and now ‘over-the -top’ streaming and other internet-based new media. The institutional actors involved thereby amplified the ‘media spectacle’ of boxing, which has always been integral, so that it’s even more constitutive of the sport – and they’ve therefore summoned from the vlogosphere the Paul Brothers and their influencer ilk. More broadly, we suggest these developments bespeak the growing ‘mediatization’ of a culture both more engrossed with media events, via new/social media, and more ironically attuned to their artifice than were previous generations. This augurs uncertain though clearly mixed psychological and ideological implications for young fans of the influencer boxers, who espouse and embody a masculinity imbued with both the toxicity of social media and its progressive norms.