2025/09/24 by Mian Wei, Kecheng Fang · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Gender, Feminism, and Media #Asian Culture and Media Studies #Social Media and Politics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/14680777.2025.2565412
openalex publication_date 2025/09/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Social media provide space for feminist activists in authoritarian regimes. This study examines two cases of online feminist consumer activism: the boycott of Procter & Gamble (P&G) and the buycott of Hanshu in China. Through interviews with 27 participants and the analysis of social media posts on Weibo and Douban, we investigated the motivations for and mechanisms of feminist actions. We found that consumerism provided protection for the dissemination of feminist ideas under rigorous censorship. Activists took advantage of various functions of different social media platforms to coordinate and strategically push forward the feminist agenda. We also found that, compared with buycotters, boycotters were more rebellious, anti-establishment, and more likely to self-identify as radical feminists. This study provides a non-Western case of the coordination and contention between feminism and consumerism and sheds light on the diverse dynamics of political consumerism.