Social Media Technology and Female Emancipation in China: Case Study in Sina-Weibo

Yingdan Lu is currently completing a M.A. degree in Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University in California, USA. Graduated from Tsinghua University in China, she has a strong interest in Chinese media and served as an intern at the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future during the summer of 2014.

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between the use of social media amongst Chinese female users and the development of Chinese feminism. A content analysis of 200 female Sina-Weibo Chinese female users was conducted to examine their self-identifications and behavior. Utilizing the “Gender as Identity” theory, the study shows that Chinese women are more open to self-identifications, and also interact more with other users on social media. However, the study also demonstrates that unchanged gender stereotypes about women and less frequent discussions on public affairs remain as a problem in China.

Key words: Social media technology, female emancipation, content analysis, Weibo

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Introduction

In the past decade, the rise of the Web 2.0 Era has become a vital representation of technology in both Western and East Asian cyberspace. As one of the most significant developments in this sector, social media has evolved as a more open space, where more female participants have the means to communicate and express their own thoughts in the public sphere. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have marked the Western network, while other social media platforms like Weibo have a dominant cyberspace presence in China.

Weibo was developed in 2007 as an analogue of Twitter. It is a merge between a Western social media platform and Chinese characteristics. “Weibo” can be literally translated to mean “short blogs” in Chinese. According to the “Statistical Report on Internet Development in China” by the China Internet Network Information Centre, there were over 3 billion Chinese Weibo users in 2012. Sina-Weibo is the largest Weibo server in China. For this reason, this study looks at Sina-Weibo specifically to investigate how the 200 unique Chinese female users registered in “Sina Ladies”, a feminist group on Weibo, self-identify and behave on social media platforms. This study also focuses on how the growth of Weibo relates to and affects the development of Chinese feminism by employing liberal feminist ideas and literature.

Background

Development of Feminism in China

Gender studies, especially feminist studies, have become an increasingly relevant topic in China since the twentieth century. Conventional gender relations in China require women to be submissive and obedient to men. This patriarchal tradition originates from previous Chinese dynasties. Nevertheless, Chinese feminism and feminist studies date back to the early twentieth century.¹ The New Cultural Movement of the May Fourth Era, which lasted from 1915 to 1925, established the concept of the “New Woman”.² However, this wave of feminism did not last long due to the disorder in China at the time, and the centralized control of Chinese culture by the Chinese Communist Party further deterred its development. It was not until the mid-1980s when an urban-based women’s movement took place and sparked the second wave of feminism in China.³ 1995 served as a hallmark for Chinese feminism when the communist state hosted the United Nation’s Fourth World Conference on Women, and when it proactively participated in the transnational women’s movement.⁴ However, feminist studies in China still lacks public attention and development. Literature on contemporary Chinese feminism is still largely limited. Therefore, the study employs liberal feminist perspectives to examine Chinese women on social media platforms.

Emergence of Weibo and Female Engagement

Weibo, a Chinese social media platform for microblogging was under development by a small networking start up called “Fanfou” in 2007.⁵ Run by the Sina Corporation, the largest IT corporation in China, Sina-Weibo made its debut on August 2009. Since then it has developed rapidly and its growth has been maintained at 20 percent per annum. Recently, Sina-Weibo has shifted its attention to mobile users and has so far developed more than 6,000 apps.⁶ Simultaneously, more Chinese women have been devoting themselves to cyberspace. According to a report on Chinese web users in 2011, the percentage of female web users has climbed from 12.3 percent in 1997 to 44.9 percent in 2011.⁷ Since Weibo is publicly open to all individuals, it offers relatively more freedom than other media outlets. As the report from CINIC shows, females take up 44.2 percent of Weibos’ entire user base.⁸

When observing female Weibo users’ behaviors, some Chinese scholars argue that female users have gender-specific characteristics in contrast to those of male users. This is evident in their online persona. This includes profile names and pictures, self-descriptions, areas of interest, and social interactions amongst Weibo groups. Their male counterparts convey their persona differently on Weibo. To this, scholars like Dong claim that Weibo usage reinforces traditional gender-specific stereotypes, including ideas like women are emotionally softer and weaker than men. Commonly, female users use Weibo to express their sentimental feelings or family problems, rather than discussing public affairs of China.⁹ Furthermore, organizations like the Women’s Federation use Weibo as a tool to broadcast ideas about how to behave “well” as a woman and conform to traditional gender norms in order to maintain harmony in Chinese societies.¹⁰ On the contrary, other scholars argue that feminism in Chinese cyberspace cannot be neglected. Although some organizations use the platform as a recreation of old gender relationships, Weibo also helps women to protect their rights.¹¹ Women have started to express their own thoughts more openly than ever before. Female celebrities on Weibo, who are identified by the “Big V” on Sina-Weibo, have had a positive effect on female Weibo users. Their participation in public affairs attract and offer attention to female users and gender-specific ideas like charities for breast cancer or taking care of girls who do not have access to education.¹² The following analysis looks at Sina-Weibo and employs “Gender as Identity” theories by feminist scholars like Van Doorn and Van Zoonen to examine the trends of female users’ representation of themselves and their gendered identities, and also the development of Chinese feminism.

The Empirical Study: Weibo’s use of ordinary women

Data and Method

The study focuses on Chinese female users who have “followed” the Weibo account for “Sina Ladies”. “Sina Ladies” is a Sina-Weibo group that shares information like women’s health, cosmetics, and other feminist or female-related Weibo posts. There are 3,780,840 accounts following “Sina Ladies”. Amongst these accounts, 200 users were randomly selected to conduct the study. To make the study more precise and comprehensive, I have categorized the analysis into two parts: (a) “Self-identification analysis” and (b) “Action analysis”. The former includes factors like “profile name”, “profile photo”, “self-introduction” and “tags”. This is concerned with the public image the female users are attempting to convey through Weibo. The latter shows how female users behave and interact on Weibo; in particular, it focuses on their “posting” and “forwarding” behaviors, their interactions with other uses, and the level of participation in public discussions.

Self-identification Analysis

In this section, women users’ self-identification on Sina-Weibo is categorized into four categories: Profile name, Profile photo, Self-introduction and Tags, the basic profile information all new users are required to fill out to set up their Weibo accounts. In the “Name” category, the findings show that 116 users’ profile names have no relations to their legal Chinese name. 14 percent of users use their English name on their profiles, and 17 percent use part of their Chinese name. Only 11 percent of users include their full Chinese name. Additionally, more than half of the users have profile names that have no relation to their legal names. However, fake profile names on other Chinese social networks consist of up to 80 to 90 percent of the total user base.¹³ Sina-Weibo still remains a more open and real environment for women to express their identities.

Table 1 Results within the category ‘name’

Sub-category	Number of users(N=200)	%
No relation to real name	116	58.0
Part of real name	34	17.0
English name	28	14.0
Full real name	22	11.0

In the “Profile Photo” category, after checking the authenticity of profile photos from the selected 200 female users, we concluded that 51 percent of users use real photos of themselves as their profile photos. Further, 29 percent of users use images unrelated to themselves as their profile photo, while 18 percent use photos of other individuals like celebrities. Lastly, two percent use their pets’ photos as their profile photo. Essentially, most women use photos of themselves on Weibo. A display of an individual’s real self on Weibo has become a trend on Weibo. This can be intercepted as progress in Chinese feminism.

Table 2 Results within the category ‘profile photo’

Sub-category	Number of users(N=200)	%
Own photo	102	51.0
Picture	58	29.0
Other people’s photo	36	18.0
Others	4	2.0

In the “Self-Introduction” category, 30 percent of users had no self-introductions or -descriptions in their profiles. The remaining 70 percent who had self-introductions can be categorized into: Emotion (46 self-introductions), Life Attitude (44), Personality (26), Hobby (14), Career (10), Appearance (4), and Others (14). Additionally, some users’ self-introductions relate to multiple categories as well. The detailed results can be seen in Table 3. As demonstrated, instead of displaying masculinity or responsibility like male users, female users on Sina-Weibo are likely to display their emotional or sentimental images to the public. This in effect, strengthens the stereotypes of softness and weakness in women.

Table 3 Results within the category ‘Self-Introduction’

Sub-category	Number of users(N=200)
Appearance	4
Career	10
Emotion	46
Hobby	14
Life attitude	44
Others	14
Personality	26

Because it is optional for users to add “tags”, only 30 percent of the 200 female users have no tags in their profile. Of the remaining 70 percent of users, 46 percent of them have no more than five tags in their profiles. Note that a Weibo user could have a maximum of ten tags on their profile. Further, 120 users have expressed a public concern in their tags, while 80 users tagged their hobbies. Likewise, 70 users tagged their personality traits, while 30 users tagged the age group they belong to. Lastly, 6 users tagged there area of location, 12 their careers, and 26 other information as well.

Table 4 Results within the category ‘tags’

Sub-category	Number of users(N=200)
Topic	120
Hobby	80
Personality	70
Age Group	30
Others	26
City	12
Career	12

According to the tag statistics, female Sina-Weibo users have started to express their concerns on public domains, while displaying their personal information in their tags. This demonstrates that Chinese feminism has the potential to make an appearance in mainstream public via Weibo.

Action Analysis

Two methods of measurement can be employed when analyzing the actions and behaviors of female users on Sina-Weibo. One approach is to observe whether the users used the “post” and/or “forward” features on Weibo in a specific timeframe. I chose the timeframe of 3^rd-5^th December. Amongst the 200 female users, 57 percent of female users did not post any new materials in this timeframe, while 43 percent did make posts on their Weibo profiles. Of the 43 percent, 26 percent did not forward other users’ Weibo, while the remaining 74 percent did. This comparison shows that Chinese female Sina-Weibo users are more likely to forward other user microblogs instead of posting their own materials. With this knowledge, it can be concluded that a lot of progress needs to be made for Chinese feminism since Chinese women are not able to express their own concerns and ideas in the public sphere.

On the other hand, according to Dong, social interactions on Sina-Weibo can be specified into (a) how female users are “followed” by others and (b) their participation in discussions about public affairs.¹⁴ Amongst the 200 female users, 49 percent had 0-100 followers, the average rate for Sina-Weibo users. Further, 23 percent had 100-200 followers, 12 percent had 200-300 followers, while the remaining 16 percent had more than 300 followers. This demonstrates that female users have positive interactions with other users on Sina-Weibo. As for the discussions about public affairs, 24 percent failed to participate in any discussion regarding socio-political issues, while the rest 76 percent did. Although Sina-Weibo serves as a public space for women to express their opinions, most of them limit their expressions to topics of private concern instead of discussing the public affairs of China.

Conclusion

From a unique Chinese context, the growth of feminism in China shows progress, specifically because Chinese women have started to push more assertively for equality. Therefore, Chinese women indeed have broadened their use of modern information technology. As a medium of expression, social media platforms like Weibo have received the attention of an increasing numbers of female users.

This study has first applied content analysis to measure the trends of female users’ representations of their gender identities and interactions. According to the results, the development of feminism in China reflects more realistic self-identifications and more interactions with other users online. However, there is still scope in improvement for feminism in China. The engrained gender-specific stereotypes still negatively affect public discourse about Chinese women. Further, it should be noted that the study has practical limitations. A larger sample size would potentially add credibility to the conclusion made. Also, higher levels of statistical methods must be employed for further research. According to Wajcman’s notion of “gender as doing instead of being”, it is reasonable to deduce that Chinese women are equipped to liberate themselves intellectually with the development of Weibo and other social media platforms.

References

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Wajcman, Judy. “Introduction: Feminist Utopia or Dystopia” & “Male Designs on Technology.” TechnoFeminism. Cambridge: Polity, 2004. 1-31. Print.

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Yingdan Lu is currently completing a M.A. degree in Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University in California, USA. Graduated from Tsinghua University in China, she has a strong interest in Chinese media and served as an intern at the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future during the summer of 2014.

Endnotes