{"title":"Counter-discourse production in social media: A feminist CDA of a Weibo post","authors":"Qiongzi Wang, Huhua Ouyang","doi":"10.1177/17504813221150187","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at the mechanism of counter-discourse production as a form of feminist digital activism in China. Taking the case of a Weibo post as an illustrative example, it explores how the counter-discourses against gender asymmetry are created, what accounts for the maintenance and dissemination of the counter-discourses, how the counter-discourses become part of the online discursive activism with online and offline effects, and what inspirations the ecology of such counter-discourse formation has for future feminist digital activism. Applying feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA) with linguistic and textual analysis, it seeks to reveal that, with linguistic device of satire, a Weibo post generated a counterpublic that challenges the dominant patriarchal discourse by exposing the hidden nature of its rhetoric and making visible what used to be taken for granted. It further demonstrates that, by utilizing the digital tool of screenshot and media mechanism of hashtag, the counterpublic produced and disseminated counter-discourses that generated, on top of conscious-raising, the will and agency to spread feminist thinking to compete with the dominant gender discourse and promote activism aimed at changing the status quo.","PeriodicalId":46726,"journal":{"name":"Discourse & Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Discourse & Communication","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813221150187","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article looks at the mechanism of counter-discourse production as a form of feminist digital activism in China. Taking the case of a Weibo post as an illustrative example, it explores how the counter-discourses against gender asymmetry are created, what accounts for the maintenance and dissemination of the counter-discourses, how the counter-discourses become part of the online discursive activism with online and offline effects, and what inspirations the ecology of such counter-discourse formation has for future feminist digital activism. Applying feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA) with linguistic and textual analysis, it seeks to reveal that, with linguistic device of satire, a Weibo post generated a counterpublic that challenges the dominant patriarchal discourse by exposing the hidden nature of its rhetoric and making visible what used to be taken for granted. It further demonstrates that, by utilizing the digital tool of screenshot and media mechanism of hashtag, the counterpublic produced and disseminated counter-discourses that generated, on top of conscious-raising, the will and agency to spread feminist thinking to compete with the dominant gender discourse and promote activism aimed at changing the status quo.
期刊介绍:
Discourse & Communication is an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles that pay specific attention to the qualitative, discourse analytical approach to issues in communication research. Besides the classical social scientific methods in communication research, such as content analysis and frame analysis, a more explicit study of the structures of discourse (text, talk, images or multimedia messages) allows unprecedented empirical insights into the many phenomena of communication. Since contemporary discourse study is not limited to the account of "texts" or "conversation" alone, but has extended its field to the study of the cognitive, interactional, social, cultural.