2026/06/24 by L Zhang · 1 voice
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Digital Education and Society #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #Social Media and Politics
paper · doi:10.1177/18681026261459128
openalex publication_date 2026/06/24 · openalex created_date 2026/06/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/25
This article investigates hashtag-centred action during the 227 controversy on Weibo following the 2020 blocking of Archive of Our Own in China, focusing on Chinese Boys’ Love (BL) fans’ participation in this episode of digitally mediated contention. Through participant observation, interviews, and secondary source analysis, it traces BL fans’ development of sophisticated algorithmic imaginaries: shared understandings of how platform algorithms function and can be contested. The study reveals three-layered algorithmic imaginaries: participatory visibility, commercial manipulation, and institutional authority. These imaginaries circulated across adjacent user communities, showing how algorithmic knowledge accumulates and adapts within China's co-regulated platform environment. The analysis advances scholarship on digital contention by demonstrating how, under authoritarian constraints, everyday users collectively negotiate algorithmic power, making hashtags as infrastructures for learning and tactical adaptation.