chinesefeminism-blog

[chinesefeminism-blog]

FINAL REPORT

SOCL923: Critical Methods in Media and Cultural Studies

Topic: The Stigmatization of Chinese Feminism in Cyberspace

 Module conveners:

Dr Robert Gutsche Jr, Senior Lecturer in Critical Digital Media Practic

YOU WU – MA Media and Cultural Studies

MIN XU – MA Media and Cultural Studies

YUMENG TIAN – MA Media and Cultural Studies

ZHEHUI ZHANG – MA Media and Cultural Studies

Word Count:10082

Abstract:

Our topic is the stigmatization of Chinese feminism in cyberspace. Feminism has always been closely linked with everyone in the society. Feminism have been stigmatized in the cyberspace seriously lead to the gender equality movement cannot be treated correctly. Ultimately, it affects everyone's rights and interests. We have used two methodologies including interview and textual analysis to find out the phenomenon and reasons of the stigmatization of Chinese feminism in cyberspace.

 Introduction:

In traditional sense, feminists are actually who want to fight for gender equality in order to make real equal come true. Feminism plays an important role in the development of the society. Women have been oppressed for thousands of years in china. Nowadays, many gender discriminations still occur in china, feminists want to let people know the stereotype is wrong and must be change. They are actually doing good changes which benefit all the people.

When feminism was introduced into china it has been continued dispraised. Because it has destroyed my peoples’ vested interest. Nowadays in the cyberspace, there are many malicious slander towards Chinese feminism. Chinese feminism has its own disparaging name ‘Zhong Hua Tian Yuan Nv Quan’ which means Chinese feminism are like indigenous and countrified dogs. The phenomenon of stigmatization of Chinese feminism in the cyberspace is very severe.

 Based on the social phenomenon above, this report is going to analyze three questions: 1. What are the concrete manifestations of the stigma of feminism in China's online media? 2. Why feminism is stigmatized in China’s online media? 3. What role does online media play in the stigmatization of feminism in China?

This study is going to make it easier for people to understand why Chinese feminism are stigmatized in the cyberspace. The study is going to be 4 parts: the first part-literature review, this part will introduce the conceptual literature related to this topic; the second part is about the methodology; then the third part will analysis the information which are get from the interview and the textual analysis. Finally, there is a bibliography which according to the APA.

 Literature review:

1.    Feminism & Chinese feminism

The term ‘feminism’ first appeared in France, referring to social theories and political movements that were created and initiated to end sexism, sexual exploitation, sexual discrimination and sexual oppression, and promote equality of the sexes. The themes of inquiry include discrimination, stereotypes, materialization (especially with regard to sexual materialization), body, oppression and patriarchy.

 ‘Feminism is a process of fighting for women’s rights in all aspects of society to achieve gender equality between women and men.’ (Jiqing, 2015) In the Oxford dictionary, feminism means ‘the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’. What is the pursuit of feminism? There is no clear definition of this issue so far, and feminists who really speak for women groups themselves are divided into many different camps, such as anti-porn, pro-porn, sexual emancipation and cherish the body care for health etc.

At the same time, China's feminism has its own unique characteristics. In the May 4th Movement in 1919, feminism was spread to China. The pioneers of the May Fourth Movement used the feminist issue as a breakthrough to promote individual rights and resist traditional culture. The issue of women’s rights was considered at that time to be the yardstick of modern civilization and the precondition for the liberation of human nature. After the founding of New China in 1949, women’s equal status with men in the law was clearly guaranteed, but in real life, the traditional model of gender relations remained entrenched.

 Generally, feminists are not in the oppressed class and have a higher education level. They belong to the upper class and some of them are the elite of the society. However, most of the oppressed female groups are unaware of what kind of situation they are in. They even challenge and oppose those feminist women. Generalizes the traits of those feminists who are criticized in China as ‘radicalness and self-interest. they are extreme hate to male instead of pursuing gender equality.’ (DuYun F, 2017)

2. Stigma & stigmatization

In talking about the research in stigmatization (not only those of the feminism one), quite a large amount of researches have been conducted on this topic in different fields. There has been 50 years’ history of the research of stigmatization. Stigma was first proposed by the sociologist Erving Goffman in his book called Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). This is considered as a starting point for social discrimination. As individuals or groups have some kinds of social unwanted or disgraceful characteristics, other people make their status lower in society. Stigma is the social derogatory and insulting label on these individuals or groups. These labels give them shame and even a sense of guilt, and at the same time lead to unfair social treatment (Scott, 2006). Discrimination is the result of stigma, the attitudes and behaviors of society in depreciation, alienation and hostility towards labeled people.

Also, the early research based on the stigma theory provided by Goffman and combining the analysis of media production (practices), media content (beliefs, attitudes), analyzing the representation of one most deprived public housing estates in the print and broadcast media, trying to figure out what role does media play in the process of stigmatization and the relationship between them. Finally, concluded by examining debates regarding the potential for rehab spoiled identity. A research has been done by Eoin Devereux, Amanda Haynes and Martin J Power (Devereux, Haynes, & Power, 2011), trying to understand the dynamics of and underlying reasons for stigmatization of certain place. The research described contributes to a body of work how mass media and other social forces factor in the creation of negative stereo damage the reputations of the places in which the poor reside.

In recent years, Chinese sociologists have studied and summarized the stigma theory. Guan Jian scrutinized the study of stigma both domestic and abroad in the article ‘The Developed Concept and the Construction of Multi-dimensional Models of Stigmatization’ and used a multi-dimensional hierarchical structure. Analyze the stigma problem from the perspective of the analysis of the model. The study proposed the formation mechanism of stigma, and the theoretical framework of stigma research psychology and behavior. It also summarizes some of the problems and limitations existing in the existing research of stigma theory, and the new progress and future development direction of the stigma theory both domestic and abroad.

3. Stigma of feminism

In 2004, Gregory M. Herek discussed sexual stigma, heterosexism, and sexual prejudice. As is known that research on feminism cannot be separated from sexuality research. Janet K. Swim, Melissa J. (1999) have discussed their survey results in terms of ‘prejudice and fear of association with the lesbian, aiming at avoiding stigma for lesbian by association.’

From a feminist point of view, the stigmatization of feminism in China originates from the society of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. Li Yinhe, a famous Chinese sexologist, believes that the contemporary feminist consciousness started to be stigmatized as soon as they were introduced to China.

DaHai H. (2016) has done the research on stigma phenomenon of intellectuals in the cyber space focusing on the promoting effect of cyberspace which produce an example for us to do research on stigma phenomenon.

Methodology:

We have chosen two methodologies during our research including textual analysis and interview. There are some reasons for why we have chosen these two.

 Firstly, textual analysis is non-contact research and objective (content analysis does not target people as objects, there is no interaction between researchers and the subjects being studied, and the researched objects will not respond to the researchers). The subjective attitudes of the researchers are not easy to interfere with research object, this non-contact study is more effective than contact research, easy to quantify and statistical analysis. However, the disadvantage of textual analysis is it cannot reflect the user's subjective perception (non-intuitive). Also, its ambiguity, meaning between the lines of the word is elusive and may have multiple.

 We have collected some typical comments on feminism in China’s online media so that we can know the mainstream opinions on Feminism in China’s cyberspace. it is the basis for us to figure out the reason for the stigmatization of feminism in China’s online media.

 Interview is a main approach to collect data during qualitative research. An interview, basically, is a conversation where several questions are asked and to get the interviewees’ reaction and feedback, not only their answers to the questions, but their facial reactions or gestures they had when answering them. ‘A qualitative research interview attempts to understand the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meaning of peoples’ experiences, to uncover their lived world prior to scientific explanations.’ (Kvale 2007) To be more specific, the aim for our interview is to have some detailed information of stigmatization of China’s feminism in a certain people’s mind. ‘The research interview is an inter-view where knowledge is constructed in the inter-action between the interviewer and the interviewee.’ (Kvale 2007)

 There are many disadvantages that interview have, including: the lack of privacy, the influence of interviewers, and the difficulty of handling results, interview surveys have a flexible side, but at the same time it also increases the randomness of this investigation process. Different respondent responses are varied and there is no uniform answer. In this way, the processing and analysis of the interview results are more complicated. Due to the low degree of standardization, it is difficult to make quantitative analysis.

 In using this certain research methodology, we had 9 one to one interview and invited 9 of our friends altogether. Each interview took about half an hour and was recorded. The interviewees we invite are those who use online media frequently. in what they comment on feminism during the interview, we could have an overview of what feminism looks like in cyberspace. All of the interviewees are Chinese and they use social media to express their opinions a lot. We want to find out that the status quo of the stigmatization of China’s feminism from their expression. The interview contents were transcribed into texts for qualitative analysis. (Detailed interview questions have been attached at the end of the report)

 But because our sample of interview is small so we have to combine this method with textual analysis to get more data and information. On the other hand, because the interviewees are greatly affected by the interviewer, the lack of privacy can easily lead to inaccurate results. The textual analysis of the contents in cyberspace can make up for this because of the anonymity of the network itself.

 Using these two methods, both collect information in the network and do objective and efficient information collection and analysis. There is also usage of the depth of interviews to understand people’s real and direct understanding of the current status of women’s rights in China.

Analysis and Discussions

1. What are the concrete manifestations of the stigma of feminism in China's online media?

 a. On the cyberspace, there are many biased definition of feminism. A lot of articles and reviews describe Chinese feminism in a wrong way. When searching on Chinese biggest search engine Baidu, using ‘Chinese feminism’ as the key words, half of the results are negative, like ‘feminism in china has such tremendous power’; ‘are Chinese feminism too radical’; ‘why do I think that feminism in China are just like cults?’ etc. The definition of feminism as ‘gender equality’ seems to not apply in China's cyber environment. Chinese feminism seems to be a very terrible figure.

 b. Also, there are many anti-feminist remarks in cyberspace. Many people describe feminism as cancer. As the comment of a Chinese netizen during comment on a news said that ‘feminism are cancer patients’ ask all the Chinese not to pregnant. Most of the time, netizens call feminism as ‘Tian Yuan Nv Quan’ to abuse feminists like dogs.

 2.    Why feminism is stigmatized in China’s online media?

 a. As far as the translation of feminism is concerned, translating feminism into ‘feminist’ is itself biased. Because feminism refers to ‘women’s right’. ‘Feminism’ is not a new Chinese vocabulary but has existed for a long time. Its meaning in Chinese corresponds to ‘Patriarchy’. The analogy in English should be to ‘matriarchy’. The feminism that correspond to male rights/hegemony are naturally misunderstood as ‘female hegemony’.

 b. Feminism in China is at the ‘marginal’ and ‘minority’ status which lack of mainstream guidance for researchers, scholars, etc. Using CNKI, the largest academic search engine in China, the results of searching for the keywords 'female rights' and 'Chinese women's rights' are quite different. China has about 400 studies on ‘female rights’ each year. However, the number of papers on the study of 'female rights in China' is very small. It is only about a dozen in a year. There are 11094 research results from the search for ‘Feminism + China’ using JSTOR. This shows that in China, there are quite a lot studies on feminism, but there are very few studies on domestic feminism. Since feminist issues are often not treasured by the traditional media, the spread of feminism is basically attached to public opinion events and then enters the public agenda through new media platforms.

 c. Feminism in China's cyberspace

 1. One of the most typical phenomena for Chinese feminism is the appearance of those certain kinds of ‘pseudo feminism’, basically refers to some misunderstanding and misuse of feminism due to many different reasons or purposes. As a matter of fact, those ‘pseudo feminism’ is quite popular on social media in China and has quite a great amount of followers. Due to the popularization of this, people may have a quite negative impression on feminism and it may also consolidate those negative stereotyping, and gradually brought about the stigma in the end. Those ‘pseudo feminism’ can be divided into two certain kinds. We are going to have a brief explanation and analysis on both of them.

 The first one can be briefly summarized as the ‘female privilege’. To be more specific, those so-called feminists hold the belief that it is the right for female to enjoy privileges because they are female and it is a ‘weakness’ in gender. For example, for those ‘female privilege’ followers, there is a slogan that summarizes their ideas really well, ‘The man is responsible for making money to support the family, and the woman is responsible for keeping their beauty’ They believe that this is feminism. What is more, they also think that it is men’s responsibility to give up more resources for women. Once men violate their wishes, they will blame them as ‘anti-feminism’ and even have a quarrel on it. Due to this kind of thinking and its popularization on social media, the negative stereotyping of feminism was gradually established.

 2.The stigmatization of feminism in China is probably due to the prevalent radical feminism in cyberspace. It may not be appropriate to name it as feminism because it actually represents a female hegemony.

 The embodiment of those female hegemonists is that they are intent to persuading all the women being independent, regardless of personal situation. They pretend to standing on all women’s shoe, conveying the view that it is men’s fault to ‘leave’ women at home and that all the women should go to the workplace in order to reveal the value of being women. What is more, the radical female hegemonists interfere the personal choices, such as the right of marriage and procreation. The news report headlined “a 51-year-old woman successfully gave birth to a twins” (Weibo@沙和尚的围脖01)was criticized by the pseudo-feminism who hold the opinion that older mothers are the complicity of male hegemony, no matter what the parties really think.

 All kinds of news release online give the angry radical feminists opportunity to find proof of the best male hegemony field, and then advocate the necessity and rationality of female hegemony.

 Another kind of embodiment is that some women are objectifying males by consuming male beauty. Over the last several months, we see increasingly more TV shows, films and commercials featuring good looking guys and targeting female consumers. It is dubbed Nan se xiao fei, literally meaning consumption of the male beauty.

Women Attracted to Male Beauty Consumption has been widely practiced through online media, which is supported by women who reject to situate themselves at the status of being consumed. For the supporters of consuming male beauty, they hold the opinion that they could revise the gender status by situating male at the place of being consumed. Objectifying males, some network terms appears, such as ‘xiao lang gou’, ‘xiao nai gou’ literally meaning ‘little puppy’ with the implication that ‘the good-looking guy who has perfect obedience to his wife/girlfriend’.

 Online media, as the platform of entertainment, provides the pseudo-feminism an easier and wider approach to spreading the concepts contradicted to gender equality.

 d. When we asked interviewees what reason do they think that lead to the stigmatization of feminism, many of them mentioned about the patriarchy in Chinese society. ‘Due to the one child policy and the patriarchal thoughts in China leads to the unbalanced development of gender ratio.’ (Interviewee SHEN, 29, Male)

 From the traditional farming society to the contemporary post-industrial era, the blood of the ancestors has always been flowing in Chinese people’s body. The traditional idea of the generations passed from farming society believed that only men can pass on the blood of the family to next generations, and women just are the accessories of the process of this heritage. "The Confucian believes that the gender relationship between men and women is the birthplace of all human relationships."(Wang Xiaoyan, 1994) And in the long history of China, the statuses of two genders have experienced a long period of inequality.

 Some scholars believe that the main reason for gender inequality in China lies in the fact that Chinese society has a strong preference of boys. The basic reason lies in three points: the succession of generations, the raising of children in order to look after the elderly, and the family power. (Li Huiying, 2012) These have a very close relationship with the family patriarchy. Boy's preference is a structural social problem. It is a complete set of gender mechanism that contains profound gender discrimination. Although the development of contemporary society is already in opposition to this mechanism but it is still not an easy thing to break the traditional concept of genders.

 3. What role does online media play in the stigmatization of feminism in China?

 a. There is no denying that feminism in China do exists many defects or inadequacies (which has been mentioned before) and it is obvious that the development of feminism in China has not yet reached a better state. However, the deviation of online media in reporting ‘feminism’ may also intensify the negative stereotyping and the problem of stigma of feminism in China to some extent. According to the ‘agenda setting’ theory (Lippmann, 1922), ‘the mass media are the principal connection between events in the world and the images in the minds of the public.’ What the mass media decided to focus on may have in influence on people’s thinking. For example, when searching for ‘Chinese feminism’ on mainstream searching website in China, negative news reports, although having the lowest frequency of occurrence, still occupied a considerable portion (seeing the picture below). Under this circumstance, combined with the established negative stereotyping of feminism, the problem of stigmatization may be intensified.

 Image：Percentage of reporting attitude towards feminism

 b. From a media perspective, the growing stigmatization of feminism in recent years is inseparable from the media's attention economy. The rate of the click of news reports is directly linked to the economy, and they are becoming convertible. Therefore media tends to incite the emotion of audiences, causing the audience to discuss the news stories. The media is about to pan-entertainment.

 Many self-media use feminism theories to pack their own attractive but wrong ideas in order to attract audiences in exchange for benefits. Digitization caused a first wave of ‘viewer empowerment’, and the second wave was from the technological infrastructure of the internet. (N Helberger, 2008) In eyeball economy, it is no longer that media decide what audiences receive, but audiences have choices, breaking the previous frame of the consumer. Media started to cater to audiences’ tastes. Although the attention economy has brought short-term benefits, it will damage the content of feminism in the long run, weaken the influence of feminism and make feminism criticized by people.

 Besides, when we focus on the platforms of Weibo and WeChat, we can divide these into two kinds of social media by their features. One is about spread among strangers, and one is about interactions with friends and acquaintances.

...thirdly, it’s also decided by the features of social media, for example, Wechat is for a social circle of people who know each other, like colleagues, friends and families... but Weibo is a circle of strangers. The information on Weibo is too large and people think that nobody knows them so they would like to say their true opinions and don’t care what other people think. It’s so easy to go extremely. However on WeChat, things are different... (Interviewee XUN, 22, Female)

Because of the differences between Weibo and WeChat, people tend to use more euphemistic terms in WeChat when talking about feminism, and sometimes even avoid discussing this topic in order to get a more smooth situation in interpersonal communication. While in Weibo's stranger social circle, people will be more direct and radical to express their views

c. ‘Populism is defined as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.’(Mudde, Rovira, Cristóbal, 2017) The cyberspace has the characteristics of equality, freedom, and low barriers to entry. It is precisely because of these characteristics that cyberspace has become a focal point for populism. As a representative of elite groups, feminists are stigmatized in the populist trend of thought.

 In China, many feminists are highly educated. Most of the feminists who have spoken in the network are senior intellectuals who have received gender education abroad. In cyberspace, those who anti feminism are generally not educated in formal feminism. The degree of education naturally divides netizens into two classes. In today's cyberspace, some populists with populist tendencies are not necessarily populists. Netizens made judgment only by the identities to determine right and wrong. It is more like an irrational way of not seeing facts to distinguish between right and wrong.

There are a lot of 'grassroots' netizens on the Internet. The level of education of these netizens is uneven, their ability to express each other is different, and their personal qualities and life experiences are very different. When they need to express themselves on a certain problem, the expression of each person are all different. Some people can rationally and restraintly discuss things. Some people, regardless of facts, love to talk dirty. Like one of the interviewee Kelly said:

‘Chinese netizens can be effected by public opinion easily. When one person stands out and expresses his/her negative views on feminism, many people only shows their agreement after reading. There are few people are really willing to seriously think about the implications of this matter. They do not necessarily understand feminism, nor do they also understand the status transitions that women are actually taking place in today’s society. Anyway, I was very annoying about those keyboard man.’

The lack of content review and checkout mechanisms is also an important reason for the irrational arguments of the populist ideological trends and opinions in the Internet. As a platform for public expression, the Internet platform is necessary to properly monitor and review the content. In today’s Chinese Internet, extreme irrational remarks about feminism often appear in various social media and forums. The discussion and dissemination of these remarks will increase its influence, affect more netizens and make more emergence of irrational speech on feminism.

 d. Due to the anonymity of the Internet, negative thoughts and emotions expand proportionately. The Spiral of Silence Mode (Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann,1993) has been challenged by the high-level right to speak through online media. The theory points out that if a person feels that his/her opinion is a minority, he/she is less likely to express himself because he/she may fear revenge or isolation by the majority of the parties. Because of the anonymity and autonomy of online media citizens, most users are more willing to freely express their opinions on social media, which means for those anti-feminist, the online media gives them a relatively safe place to stigmatize feminism.

 Media bulit a symbolic reality called “pseudo-environment”，which influence the objective judgment of the audiences to the reality. ‘People construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. Human behavior is stimulated by the person's pseudo-environment and then is acted upon in the real world. Some of the general implications of the interactions among one's psychology, environment, and the mass communications media are highlighted.’(Walter，1922)

 At the same time, due to the new media has the characteristics of interactivity, with large amount of information, one-sided narration and fragmented information also makes the spread of communication more irrational, ‘they are based on means of modern communication and digital information technology, highly interactive, diversified in the forms of presentation, and constantly innovative.’(Lei and Liang, 2017) Everyone can access to new media and put forward their own perspective. Many participants are advocators of patriarchy because they want to keep the advantages from this kind of oppression of women, so they always say some crucial words on social media to avoid feminism.

Conclusion & Reflection

 Because of the misunderstanding of the term ‘feminism’ caused by translation from English into Chinese, and the impediments of the vested interests of the original patriarchal system, the development of feminism in China is difficult. Chinese feminists are a marginal minority group. The various characteristics of the network have also exacerbated the stigma of feminism in the Internet. In the process of social progress, the resistance is inevitable when changing people's stereotype. Feminists must adhere to their ideals and convictions. The government must also supervise these erroneous remarks on the Internet. Only do so can gender equality comes true.

 In our interview, we only had 9 interviewees. All nine interviewers were university graduates or above. They were relatively same in education and their media habits were similar. We have not come into contact with people who are extremely resistant to feminism. If we do this research further, we will take the initiative to reach out to some people in the network who oppose women's rights and interview their opinions. At the same time, due to the device, we didn’t record video. some facial expression or gesture may be missed out. We will also pay attention to this point later.

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 Appendix:

 Interviewee 1: Cassie (23, Female, Media and Cultural Studies, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 2: Kelly (23, Female, Advertiser)

Interviewee 3: Kang (24, Male, Bachelor of Food Engineering)

Interviewee 4: Yang (23, Male, Electrical Engineering, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 5: Shen (29, Male, Business Staff)

Interviewee 6: Xun (22, Female, Work for Self-media about Feminism)

Interviewee 7: Nan (24, Female, Media, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 8: Yi (24, Male, Bachelor of Life Science, Postgraduate)

Interviewee 9: Wen (21, Female, Computer Science, Junior)

 Interview1: CASSIE (23, Female, Media and Cultural Studies, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you ever heard about feminism?

A: Yes, I first heard about this before I went abroad, but things seem to be different on various social media platform. On Weibo, basically something not very good in fact, like “rural feminism” or and other negative adjectives, but on Facebook always very positive.

 Q：When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I was in university, I first saw something about feminism, but at that time I felt that it doesn’t have much relation with me. After I came here and having some course of gender studies, I realized that feminism really has some close connected with me, and my career marriage will always be influenced by the notion of equality between men and women.

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A：I think feminism is not only for the benefits of female, but male’s benefits as well. Stereotyping and consolidated gender discrimination may also be a big press for male.

 Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A：Aggressive, hard and lonely

 Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A：I think it differs from language. In English it seems to be a neutral word, while in Mandarin, it seems to be more aggressive, especially when some people misunderstand it and use this word for their own purpose. So from my personal point of view, in China feminism has much more negative meanings than that in western countries.

 Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A：Of courses, I think feminism has a really close connection with me. My career, my family and my marriage in the future, all of them will be affected by the development of feminism. My rights as a woman can be protected.

 Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A：I think the growing of feminism has some influence on those people with vested interest, so it is unavoidable that there will be some counterattack in public opinion and the consolidated inherent concept as always difficult to be changed.

 Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A：Basically in Weibo, sometimes on Facebook as well, usually articles from some feminism opinion leader or some articles about the development of feminism like the “me too campaign”. But nowadays...some more articles about the gender inequality in workplace.

When I need to use these things in my essay, I will search for them in purpose, but usually I see those things in casual, but I will forward it when I have same feeling with it.

I think the reason why I can remember those things is that it is closely connected with my life in the future, and I also want to avoid bad things like gender discrimination in my life and career in the future.

 Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A：I basically don't send related content. The main reason is that very long ago I didn't really understand this concept, and I thought that women's rights had nothing to do with me, so I wouldn't send them. But now I have learned a lot about the content of feminism. I also think that I don’t know much about it, I dare not send it, and I’m afraid to say the wrong thing.

 Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A：I think the status of women's rights in China is still not very optimistic. It is mainly because the environment does not support the development of women's rights. I feel that many national policies are against feminist rights. For example, many feminist movements’ leaders were expelled from the rental house by the police.

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A：I think that the problem is still about vested interests. Women's rights affect some people's vested interests, so they rush back. There is also a national policy that now has a tendency to make women return to their families.

 Interview 2 KELLY (23, Female, Advertiser)

Q:  Have you heard about feminism?

A：Yes, I’ve heard about it.

 Q:  When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I was in high school, I saw some news in the news. When I see this feminism information, I’ve notice that there are more information in European and American.

 Q:  What do you think about feminism?

A：I think feminism fights for women’s equal status as men. I think this is very meaningful for women.

 Q:  Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A：Realistic, positive and brave.

 Q:  Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: I think it is neutral. Because feminism itself is the declaration of women’s rightful right. Since it is a proper demand, then it shouldn’t be judged to be right or wrong.

 Q:  Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: As for me, it’s OK. Women are in dominant place in my workplace. Also, I haven’t met any unequal treatment in my life. However, the phenomenon of inequality between men and women in the elders is still very obvious.

 Q:  How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A：Chinese netizens can be affected by public opinion easily. When one person stands out and expresses his/her negative views on feminism, many people only shows their agreement after reading. There are few people are really willing to seriously think about the implications of this matter. They do not necessarily understand feminism, nor do they also understand the status transitions that women are actually taking place in today’s society. Anyway, I was very annoying about those keyboard men.

 Q:  Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms?

A：Yeah, on ZhiHu.

 Q:  What is that?

A：Mainly different people's interpretation of feminist cognition.

 Q:  By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose?

A：I haven’t taken the initiative to search, sometimes see the relevant posts.

 Q:  Could you please describe a little for us?

A：Because many people now have an excessive interpretation of feminism, that women want to have higher status than men, or want to obtain more rights than men through feminist movements. But in reality, what women need is only the weakening of gender significance, not being materialized, assuming due obligations and responsibilities.

 Q:  Why do you think you can still remember this context?

A：Because feminism itself is a very controversial topic, the appearance of such a positive message seems to be very comfortable, and it feels that some people are still sober.

 Q:  What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A：I feel they are reasonable. It’s actually what I think.

 Q:  Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A：No, I haven’t. I almost never comment on controversial topics in social media.

 Q:  What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A：People are still at the first stage of learning about feminism. Too many people have excessive interpretation of feminism and lack proper understanding.

 Q:  What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A：The society does not give a clear attitude to feminism. At the same time, there are many pseudo feminists who use the feminist topic to exchange concepts in certain feminist events and cause people to misunderstand feminism.

 Interview 3 ZHENG YUEKANG (24, Male, Bachelor of Food Engineering)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

 Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I looking something on Weibo, I see it inadvertently. Then I start to get to know about feminism.

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think it’s literally reasonable.

 Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Ideal, advanced for contemporary society, inevitable process of future.

 Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Commendatory term, at least neutral.

 Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: A little bit.

 Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: The negative comment is not because most people think that feminism is wrong, but there is a contradiction between the social process at the present stage and the ultimate goal of ideal feminism. It needs to be step by step. It’s like...socialism is also still in its infancy? On the other hand, feminism on the Internet lacks a specific standard. Feminism itself is still on the primary process of development, so it’s easy for people with undesirable motivations to use it as a tool for their own profit, such as some bloggers who gain profits by posting chicken soup contents and inciting negative emotions on Weibo and etc. This is the reason for many men and women who originally understood and respected women’s rights then resistant to feminism.

 Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: Probably more on Sina Weibo, although it is popularly recommended and often very confused, I generally support and understand the normal one.

 Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Basically not, this is not something I can change and help.

 Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: Confusion, there is no uniform standard, Chinese feminism is easy to be used by people with ulterior motives, but in some aspects is more advanced than some countries in the world. The public needs to be properly guided and scientifically developed.

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: China hasn’t developed wavy well. The quality of the people and the economy are not well-developed. In such a situation, it is unrealistic to realize communism directly. The same holds true for feminism. It is unrealistic to make feminism developed advanced in a short time. Some Chinese feminists are bent on developing feminism as the developed countries. The ideal is good but ignores the process. If there is an authoritative institution and correct appeal and guidance, let feminism and other parts of the Chinese society develop at the same time, and it will be getting better and better in the long run.

 Interview 4 XIA YANG (23, Male, Electrical Engineering, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: No

 Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: From my high school.

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Sometimes reasonable, sometimes extreme.

 Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Respect, fair

 Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neural

 Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: No

 Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Nothing

 Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: No

 Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Never

 Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I haven’t seen it.

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: History, customs

  Interview 5 SHEN (29, Male, Business Staff)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes, of course

 Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I first knew about this on social media platforms like renren.com and Sina Weibo, at about 4 to 5 years ago.

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Well I think the appearance and popular of feminism is an unavoidable tendency during the process of the development of society and I believe that feminism is a part of the equal rights.

 Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: equal, respect, independent

 Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: neutral word

 Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: I think so, because...you know, it is something that connected with the “political correctness” and I also have some communication with women in my work every day, so I do have some awareness of feminism.

 Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: Yes, usually something like the feminism campaign, bad news like sexual harassment, some marriage-related topics and discussion on the behavior and dressing of Chinese male and female etc. In fact, some of its remarks are quite extreme. I won’t search those things for purpose.

 Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: I think it is because some so-called “feminist” in China are not the real feminist, but the female privilege, which means that female should have more privilege because female is the weaker one. I am very disgusted with this to tell the truth, but I’ll not pay attention to this.

 Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: No I haven’t, because this topic is quite sensitive.

 Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I think... well to be honest, Chinese feminism hasn’t reached the status to realize that feminism is to fight for the equal rights, they are just thinking about the privilege.

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: 1. Due to the one child policy and the patriarchal thoughts in China leads to the unbalanced development of gender ratio

2. The status of women has always been oppressed by feudal ideas, so that it cause too much negative emotion when feminist thoughts went into China

3. Due to physiological congenital structures, women are more likely to be affected by emotion.

 Interview 6 XUN (22, Female, Work for Self-media about Feminism)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes

 Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: The first year in the university

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think feminism in China has a more serious polarization: one is those extreme one which means ‘female hegemony’, and the other one is those ‘fake feminism’ and advocate incorrect values. Because of this, those who really want to advocate feminism in China were regarded as the ‘rural feminism’ (a malicious calling for feminism in China). From my personal idea, I think that the real feminism is quite simple actually. Feminism means that everyone, both men and women has the rights to choose or reject something.

 Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: equal, neutral, no label, no stereotyping, diversified and respect

 Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: A neutral word

 Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Of courses, compared with men, women are faced with problems, difficulties and challenges due to gender since their birth.

 Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I have seen some of it like videos or articles. For example, the documentary of Jane Austin and some beautiful stories that properly explains what feminism is. On the contrary, of courses, some discriminatory opinion as well. I’m not searching these things for purpose but I am always quite sensitive with this topic.

 Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Well in fact, even coins have two sides. I can understand why some people don’t accept feminism at all for China has been a feudal great power for thousands of years and the notion of feminism wobble the male privilege. On the other hand, those ‘fake feminism’ misuse feminism and make others have a misunderstand on it so that people may have a negative stereotyping on feminism. I feel quite helpless about this. I hope someday in the future, people can change their mind on it.

 Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Yes! I’ve just done this today.

 Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I think basically it is showing a positive tendency, more and more people are now aware of fighting for equal rights, but on the contrary, it seems that the government’s policy direction seems to be different, so it is unclear that how will the development of feminism in China in the future.

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: Well there may be many different reasons I think. Roughly speaking, firstly, the government didn’t take an appropriate leading role; secondly, the notion of feminism hasn’t been popularized; thirdly, it’s also decided by the features of social media, for example, WeChat is for a social circle of people who know each other, like colleagues, friends and families...but Weibo is a circle of strangers. The information on Weibo is too large and people think that nobody knows them so they would like to say their true opinions and don’t care what other people think. It’s so easy to go extremely. However on WeChat, things are different… Finally, I think we are lacking of researchers in feminism and gender studies, the main communication channel is social media so basically, feminism in China are lacking of theoretical bases.

 Interview 7 NAN (24, Female, Media, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

 Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I have had some shallow ideas of equality between men and women from my childhood, but started to understand systematically from high school.

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: This is a way for women to fight for equal rights. I don’t think if women are actually equal to men or not is not so important. What is important is that, for women, if we have certain rights, we must bear the corresponding obligations.

 Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: -

 Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neutral

 Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Yes.

 Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Many publicity stunts on feminism lead to the misunderstandings that feminism means women enjoy more benefits rather than equal rights. And many women think men should accommodate them for love. Actually I think feminism is not wrong, but over-feminism is wrong.

 Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I thought of an exhibition called ‘What did I wear at the day of being raped’. It’s a great example. Many women being raped are always asked the question like ‘What did you wear at that day?’ But actually from this exhibition we can know that most of them were not exposed wearing and even had little femininity. Some of them wore sports wears, even police uniforms when they were raped. I think it’s really disrespectful to women and feminism asking questions like that.

 Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Yes

 Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: -

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: In essence, it is because the social environment and the women’s misplaced status.

 Interview 8 YI (24, Male, Bachelor of Life Science, Postgraduate)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

 Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I started to know about feminism from high school history classes. My history teacher introduced the feminist movements in 20th century at that time. When in college, touching more information, I started to think that feminism is a very important social issue.

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think this is a method for women to obtain equal rights and opportunities for themselves through public opinions, movements, and struggles in the context of social secular rules. Under the guidance of feminism, women can organize and plan to reflect their demands to society and the government, causing public opinion. Again, this is a challenge to the existing social rules. Starting from feminism, more and more people are beginning to voice for their equal rights.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Equal; challenging; changing

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neutral word. The concept of feminism is not to say that we encourage women to grab benefits for themselves but to change the current situation of unequal social identity between two genders. The eventual purpose is not that women’s position is higher than men’s. It’s to say that they are both equal, including political position, economy and education.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Yes. The rights of women can not only rely on women, they need help from men, and vice versa. It’s a win-win.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Everyone's views on feminism are determined by their experience and level of education, so it is normal for negative comments on feminism to appear on the Internet. Especially in China’s environment, there are some remnants of men’s patriarchy in the tradition. Sexism prevails in all aspects of society. For example, people prefer boys and believe that only boys can pass on to generations. When looking for a job, they are also treated different genders differently. Chinese people have a relatively late understanding of feminism and they have limited access to them. Therefore, when information about feminism appears on the Internet, many people, especially those with low education level and older people will make negative comments based on their experiences.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I have less contact with feminism, and often through the Internet and reading some WeChat articles. What I’ve seen is that in 2015, five feminists were arrested. I saw this on the wiki. I found some related reports in order to understand the truth better. This content is: These five feminists have appealed for feminism and LGBT people’s rights through artistic performances and exhibitions. They were then arrested by related organizations and finally released under the pressure of international public opinion. I was deeply impressed by this because of the unfair treatment. The first time I heard this news, I felt that the five women were very brave. I also felt that the struggle was long-term.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: No. It is difficult to bring out some different opinions on Chinese social media. The police may find and arrest you due to your comment.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: The status quo is that there is a seemingly equal right for men and women, but if women want to fight for their legal rights as western women do, it’s not easy to achieve in contemporary China.

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: The social ideology of Chinese male superiority is too deep-rooted. Women themselves are very inadequate in their understanding of their rights. They are in the weaker side of the society and have no ability or opportunity to fight for their own rights and interests.

 Interview 9 WEN (21, Female, Computer Science, Junior)

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes, but I don’t know much about it.

 Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: Recent 2 or 3 years. But I feel that I received a lot of influence of accesses to feminism. It may be I know more after I entered the university and get along with other people who know this much.

 Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Nothing to feel. However, quite a large part of the people does not really understand feminism. They are pursuing the banner of feminism and equality between men and women but actually they are just women superiority or men superiority. Some people only one-sidedly emphasize some rights, benefits and even privileges that women should or expect to receive. They do not really treat women and men on an equal position. They regard themselves as weak and do not pay attention to their own growth and development. They only expect and demand. Men and society are unreasonably tolerant of their own deficiencies. This to a certain extent also debases women and feminists, and actively reduces the status of women below men.

 Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Domineering, independence, emancipatory, unruly

 Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Maybe...neutral I think. After all, it’s kind...good and bad mixed.

 Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Well...not so much. Know something, changing a little, but still be myself, you know.

 Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: I think there are two kinds of comments. One is that they just don’t what to know about feminism, not listening to any reasons or arguments. Another one is that people grab the part of immature ideas of feminism and misunderstand it. Besides, many women just follow these immature or...we can say...wrong ideas, regarding themselves as advanced feminists, saying some stupid opinions. No people like that. Chinese feminism still has a long way to go.

 Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I can’t remember well. My friend told me that in Vatican City, there are some naked people shouted ‘God is a girl’? I don’t know...I think it’s too much. I don’t like it and can’t understand why they are so extreme.

 Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Not very much. But sometimes if I feel touched for certain contents maybe I would like to repost.

 Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: Extreme people are not too many but the traditional opinions are not easy to be changed. People know that feminism is something good but still hard to change our mind.

 Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: Traditional patriarchal opinions, lack of education, phenomenon that people already have some misunderstanding and prejudice about feminism.

[chinesefeminism-blog]

WEEK10 READING REVIEW&DISCUSSION

Qualitative inquiry and research design choosing among five traditions / Chapter 10   

Author: Creswell, John W.                                      Pages: xv, 403 p. :                            

Resource Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 375-388) and indexes.         Publication Date: c1998.                            

ISBN: 9780585385327 (electronic bk.)            

Central question: How do qualitative researchers know that the qualitative study is believable, accurate, and ‘right’? - Answer coming from the standards of quality in qualitative research and the approaches.

Howe and Eisenhardt (1990) - five standards be applied to all research - 1. whether the research questions drive the data collection and analysis 2. the extent to which the data collection and analysis techniques are competently applied in a technical sense 3. whether the researcher's assumptions are made explicit 4. whether the study has overall warrant 5. the study must have “value” in informing and improving practice

Lather (1991) - “reconceptualization of validity” - four types of validity - 1. triangulation 2. construct  validity 3. face validity 4. catalytic validity

Denzin (1989a)  - standards and verification

1. Select a series of research hypotheses and problems to be answered.

2. Record the objective events and experiences in the subject’s life that pertain to the research problem.

3. Triangulate these events by source and point of view so that contradictions, irregularities, and discontinuity can be established.

4. Obtain the subject’s interpretations of these events in their chronological or natural order.

5. Analyze these reports in terms of internal validity, internal criticism, external validity, and external criticism.

6. Resolve the validity of these sources and establish the priority of the sources for testing hypotheses.

7. Test the hypotheses while searching for negative evidence.

8. Organize the draft of the entire life history, submitting this to the subject for reactions.

9. Rework the report in its natural sequence and conclude with a statement concerning theory.

Denzin (1989a) - several guidelines for writing an interpretive biography

▪ The lived experiences of interacting individuals are the proper subject matter of sociology.

▪ The meanings of these experiences are best given by the persons who experience them; thus, a preoccupation with method, validity, reliability generalizability, and

theoretical relevance of the biographical method must be set aside in favor of a concern for meaning and interpretation.

▪ Students of the biographical method must learn how to use the strategies and techniques of literary interpretation and criticism.

▪ When an individual writes a biography, he or she writes himself or herself into the life of the subject about whom the individual is writing; likewise, the reader reads

through her or his perspective.

Strauss and Corbin (1990) - seven criteria related to the general research process

Criterion #1: How was the original sample selected? What grounds?

Criterion #2: What major categories emerged?

Criterion #3: What were some of the events, incidents, actions, and so on (as indicators) that pointed to some of these major categories?

Criterion #4: On the basis of what categories did theoretical sampling proceed? Guide data collection? Was it representative of the categories?

Criterion #5: What were some of the hypotheses pertaining to conceptual relations (that is, among categories), and on what grounds were they formulated and tested?

Criterion #6: Were there instances when hypotheses did not hold up against what was actually seen? How were these discrepancies accounted for? How did they affect the hypotheses?

Criterion #7: How and why was the core category selected (sudden, gradual, difficult, easy)? On what grounds? (p. 253; emphases added)

Strauss and Corbin (1990) - six criteria related to the empirical grounding of a study

Criterion #1: Are concepts generated?

Criterion #2: Are the concepts systematically related?

Criterion #3: Are there many conceptual linkages, and are the categories well developed? With density?

Criterion #4: Is much variation built into the theory?

Criterion #5: Are the broaden conditions … built into its explanation?

Criterion #6: Has process (change or movement) been taken into account? (pp. 254–256; emphases added)

Spindler and Spindler (1987) - nine criteria for a “good ethnography”

Criterion I. Observations are contextualized.

Criterion II. Hypotheses emerge in situ as the study goes on.

Criterion III. Observation is prolonged and repetitive.

Criterion IV. Through interviews, observations, and other eliciting procedures, the native view of reality is obtained.

Criterion V. Ethnographers elicit knowledge from informant­participants in a systematic fashion.

Criterion VI. Instruments, codes, schedules, questionnaires, agenda

for interviews, and so forth are generated in situ as a result of inquiry.

Criterion VII. A transcultural, comparative perspective is frequently an unstated assumption.

Criterion VIII. The ethnographer makes explicit what is implicit and tacit to informants.

Criterion IX. The ethnographic interviewer must not predetermine responses by the kinds of questions asked.

Stake (1995) - 20 criteria for assessing a good case study report

1. Is the report easy to read?

2. Does it fit together, each sentence contributing to the whole?

3. Does the report have a conceptual structure (i.e., themes or issues)?

4. Are its issues developed in a serious and scholarly way?

5. Is the case adequately defined?

6. Is there a sense of story to the presentation?

7. Is the reader provided some vicarious experience?

8. Have quotations been used effectively?

9. Are headings, figures, artifacts, appendixes, and indexes used effectively?

10. Was it edited well, then again with a last­minute polish?

11. Has the writer made sound assertions, neither over­ nor under­interpreting?

12. Has adequate attention been paid to various contexts?

13. Were sufficient raw data presented?

14. Were data sources well chosen and in sufficient number?

15. Do observations and interpretations appear to have been triangulated?

16. Is the role and point of view of the researcher nicely apparent?

17. Is the nature of the intended audience apparent?

18. Is empathy shown for all sides?

19. Are personal intentions examined?

20. Does it appear that individuals were put at risk?

Qualitative inquiry & research design : choosing among five approaches / Chapter 10

Author: Creswell, John W.,

Additional Person Name: Poth, Cheryl N.,

Pages: xxv, 459 pages :

Resource Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 423-438) and indexes.

Publication Date: 2018

Two addressed questions: Is the account valid, and by whose standards? How do we evaluate the quality of qualitative research?

Validation strategies - researcher’s lens

1. Corroborating evidence through triangulation of multiple data sources.

2. Discovering negative case analysis or disconfirming evidence.

3. Clarifying researcher bias oe engaging in reflexivity.

Validation strategies - participant’s lens

1. Member checking or seeking participant feedback.

2. Prolonged engagement and persistent.

3. Collaborating with participants.

Validation strategies - reader’s or reviewer’s lens

1. Enabling external audits.

2. Generating a rich, thick description.

3. Having a peer review or debriefing of the data and research process.

Reliability perspectives and procedures - intercoder agreement

1. Establish a common platform for coding, and develop a preliminary code list.

2. Develop and share the initial codebook among coders.

3. Apply the codebook to additional transcripts, and compare coding across multiple researchers.

4. Assess and report the intercoder agreement among researchers.

5. Revise and finalize he codebook to imform further coding.

Evaluation criteria - narrative research

1. Focus on an individual?

2. Collect stories about a significant issue?

3. Develop a chronology?

4. Tell a story?

5. Embed reflexivity?

Evaluation criteria - phenomenological research

1. Heuristic questioning

2. Descriptive richness

3. Interpretive depth

4. Distinctive rigor

5. Strong and adressive meaning

6. Experiential awakening

7. Inceptual epiphany

Evaluation criteria - grounded theory research

1. Focus on the study of a process, an action, or an interaction as the key element in the theory?

2. Integrate a coding process that works from the data to a larger theoretical model?

3. Present the theoretical model in a figure or a diagram?

4. Advance a story line or proposition connected with the categories in the theoretical model that presents further questions to be answered?

5. Use memoing throughout the process of research?

6. Embed evidence of reflexivity or self-disclosure by the researcher about his or her stance in the study?

Evaluation criteria - ethnographic research

1. Convey evidence of clear identification of a culture-sharing group?

2. Specify a cultural theme that will be examined in light of this culture-sharing group?

3. Describe the cultural group in detail?

4. Communicate themes derived from an understanding of the cultural group?

5. Identify issues that arose ‘in the field’ that reflect on the relationship between  the researcher and the participants the interpretive nature of reporting, and sensitivity and reciprocity in the co-creating of the account?

6. Explain how the culture-sharing group works overall?

7. Integrate self-disclosure and reflexivity by the researcher about her or his position in the research?

Evaluation criteria - case study research

1. Identify the case(s) studied?

2. Present a rationable for the case(s) selection?

3. Describe the case(s) in detail?

4. Artculate the themes identified for the case(s)?

5. Report assertions or generalizations from the case analysis?

6. Embed researcher reflexivity or self-disclosure about his or her position in the study?

[chinesefeminism-blog]

WEEK8 READING REVIEW&DISCUSSION

literatures related:

Qualitative inquiry & research design: choosing among five approaches-Chapter 7 & 8

This week, it seems to be the time for us to use each of the components and finish our first draft. So basically, the essential reading this week (mentioned above), is quite useful for us to do the first draft. The literature this week is talking about the data collection and the analysis of the data afterwards.

Data collection is generally regarded as a series of interrelated activities aimed at gathering good information to answer emerging research questions. It is worth noting that determining a purposeful sampling of participants is quite important. ‘New forms of qualitative data continually emerge in the literature, but all forms might be grouped into four basic types of information: interviews, observations, documents and audiovisual materials.’ What is more, a qualitative researcher faces many ethical issues that surface during data collection in the field and in analysis and dissemination of qualitative reports. The ethical problem should always be in the account, usually after getting the permission of the participants.

Just like it has been mentioned last week, the assumptions of the research conclusion might have an effect on the data analysis, in doing the data analysis afterwards, the most important thing is that we need to avoid bringing the personal thinking of the researchers and trying to be objective anyway.  The data analysis spiral can be divided into five types (managing and organising the data, reading and memoing the data, describing and classifying codes into themes, developing and assessing interpretations and representations and visualizing the data. ) and it is worthy of being known that doing an analysis on data which come from five different approaches/methods (narrative research, phenomenological, grounded theory, ethnographic and case study) may also be different.

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WEEK6 READING REVIEW&DISCUSSION

Related literatures:

Seeing the invisible algorithm: The practical politics of tracking the credit trackers

Writing culture : the poetics and politics of ethnography-Introduction: Partial Truths

This week, basically, we are going to focus on two parts according to the required reading. The first one is the analysis of digital objects, summarizing what our conclusions might be and how our research will be affected by this such ‘finding’. The second one is that certain research method of ethnography. The literature materials related to this has been listed above.

In the first essential reading, the author gave a brief introduction of the problem that they really concern about in doing a certain research. ‘Susan Leigh Star (1991) captures a central concern of much politically sensitive academic practice: how to make that, which is rendered invisible, visible. There There is a politics to that which is unseen, in which forms of what she calls “social control” become tied to the erasure of the practical activities – the forms of work – that go into making and stabilising the domains of the visible.’

However, Although the authors agree with the spirit of the ‘invisible sociology’, what they really focus on is not the human labour, but the digital works (which may not have much connection with our own research actually). What our group members think is that the example of “tracking the data” can be regarded as an analogy to the influence that assumptions may have on the the research conclusion. At the end of this chapter, the authors pointed out their challenge and the methods they have already tried. ‘For our emergent sociology of the invisible, the challenge has been, and continues to be, to grasp how trackers partake in forming digital traces and how they are also traces in formation themselves. One way we have begun to grapple with these issues is through visualisations that have emerged as the product of collaboration with designers. These reflections have helped us in turn to profile the different digital subprime websites, as different kinds and unstable textures. The challenge as we take this project forward is how to track and render visible these textures, as they continue to be reshaped and knitted anew.’ After finishing this reading, we realized that we also need to take our own assumption of the research conclusion into consideration and what is more, we need to get to know that our research conclusion may be influenced by our own expectations on the research findings.

As for the second reading this week, generally speaking, it is an brief introduction of the certain research method of ethnography, using certain cases to have an explanation on it. Just like it is mentioned in the article, ‘Ethnography is an emergent interdisciplinary phenomenon. Its authority and rhetoric have spread to many fields where "culture" is a newly problematic object of description and critique. The present book, though beginning with fieldwork and its texts, opens onto the wider practice of writing about, against, and among cultures. This blurred purview includes, to name only a few developing perspectives, historical ethnography (Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Natalie Davis, Carlo Ginzburg), cultural poetics (Stephen Greenblatt), cultural criticism (Hayden White, Edward Said, Fredric Jameson), the analysis of implicit knowledge and everyday practices (Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau), the critique of hegemonic structures of feeling (Raymond Williams), the study of scientific communities (following Thomas Kuhn), the semiotics of exotic worlds and fantastic spaces (Tzvetan Todorov, Louis Mann), and all those studies that focus on meaning systems, disputed traditions, or cultural artifacts.’ However, we found out that in doing our own research, this certain methods may not fit our own research, so we may not focus too much on it.

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WEEK5 READING REVIEW&DISCUSSION

A Beginner's guide to doing qualitative research in mass communication

Author: Pauly, J J

Journal Title: Journalism Monographs

Volume:125

Start page:1

End page:29

In the past, many experienced researchers rarely said about their research methods, so it seems that qualitative research lacks some integral and consistent model. The author’s model is suitable for this kind of research: single and with the clear definition.

And from this article, author introduced the steps of qualitative researches.

The first step is to find a research topic and to make a sense of the qualitative research. There are three philosophical presumptions to support it: 1. Human are symbolized. 2. Human build their world by using symbols. 3. Symbolic behaviors are social and public. This kind of symbolic practice constitutes the unique part of the qualitative research.

Finding a good position in current literatures is the way of determining a appropriate research question. For qualitative researchers, Harold Lasswells’ model ‘reduced the communication to the transmission of a pre-existent message’. ‘That transmission model, as James Carey has called it, conceives of communication as a sequence of individual message transactions.’ Besides, this model separated the sender and receiver. But qualitative researches are to make personal information understandable and ‘communication’.

Experienced researchers always choose one of the three ways to do research: ‘as a product, as a practice, or as a commentary’, and the best is to combine all of them together.

The second step is to formulate research questions. Qualitative researchers don’t oppose quantitative research methods such as statistics, but they think it may cut off the reality so that to make it meet the results of quantitative researches. The difference between two researches’ literature reviews is that quantitative research needs to find the results and conclusions in previous researches but qualitative research needs to ‘use the review to identify an ongoing conversation that the researcher now proposes to join’.

However the problem is that the language of daily life is obviously metaphorical and contradictory, while in researches, they should turn these into abstract terms. Also, ‘it is difficult in qualitative research to specify hypothetical statements that the research intends to test’.

The author mentioned a useful example. While studying parents’ concerns about the possibility of television stimulating children’s violence, qualitative researchers don’t need to provide a standard definition of violence, because part of the study’s purpose is to explain what violence is in the eyes of different groups and when these groups see it, how do they understand it.

The third and the fourth steps are to gather the evidence and to interpret it. Quantitative researches don’t lack evidence and the problem is not collecting but analysing. There is no easy answer in interpreting, except perhaps to say ‘from immersion in the materials’. ‘Readers' acceptance of my claims depends upon their judgements of 1) whether I had read enough of the right kinds of materials, and 2) whether I had interpreted those materials in a reasonable, useful, thoughtful, and imaginative way. Readers will judge my conclusions based upon their own knowledge of those same materials, their prior understanding of other materials that they claim resemble my materials, and their simultaneous reading of passages that I quote in my interpretation.’

Qualitative researchers never know if they have gathered enough material, and the standard is whether they feel able to convinced their readers. If  readers think that researchers do well, they will accept the article, otherwise they will build an alternative interpretation to disprove.

The last step is to tell the researcher's story. ‘The trick for a novice researcher is to choose a literary persona that feels comfortable but that does not acquiesce too readily to the conventions of common-sense realism. That persona should not destroy the integrity of the subjects' cultural worlds in the very process of writing about them.’

Qualitative research methods for media studies / Chapter 3

Author: Brennen, Bonnie,

Pages: 1 online resource (255 pages) :

Edition: Second edition.

ISBN: 9781315435961 (Proquest Ebook Central)

OCLC Number: (CaONFJC)EBC4891115

Questions are the most important parts of our communiction, which are used to collect information, value opinions, establish agreements. Many researchers regard interview as a valuable way of collecting a lot of useful information and people express their thoughts from different backgrounds.

The author introduced the definition of interview in this chapter: ‘an interview is a focused, purposeful conversation between two or more people’. And he also explained three basic types of interviews: structured, semi-structured and unstructured open-ended conversations. From his explanation we can see, the structured interview is often used in investigations and researches because it can obtain specific and precise factual information. Semi-structured interviews are more flexible. Unstructured interviews are useful when facing some complex voices,experiences and emotions. Unlike the quantitative researches, qualitative researches less care about the data collection, but try to find out the information that every interviewee has mentioned.

There may be a unbalance between interviewers and interviewees so interviewers have the responsibility to protect interviewees from any harms when they get interviewees’ reliance.

As for interpreting the evidence collected from interviews, Gubrium and Holstein (2002a) said that, ‘Each theoretical perspective implicates a set of procedures or ways of organizing, categorizing, and interpreting data. There is no single approach to qualitative analysis’ (p. 673).

Mediated Intimacies: Connectivities, Relationalities and Proximities / Chapter - Broadcasting the Bedroom: Intimate musical practices and collapsing contexts on YouTube

Author: Rikke Andreassen,Michael Nebeling Petersen,Katherine Harrison,Tobias Raun Pages: 320                            

Publication Date: 26 Oct. 2017                            

Edition: 1 edition                            

ISBN: 1138631876                            

‘context collapse’ - online participation and self-representation - one of the defining aspects of the current social media landscape

‘impression management’ - In all cases, people try to adjust their performances to fit certain conventions and expectations. - build the intimate relationships with other people

‘narrow casting’ - a type of transmission directed towards highly segmented

audiences and specific communities - ‘home-mode’ forms of cultural production - ‘privately public’ or ‘publicly private’

‘Musical bedroom performance’ is a kind of online videos posted on YouTube, in which people play instruments or sing songs in front of cameras in their bedrooms.

Examples of collapsing contexts: 1. the issue of private versus public 2. the vacillation between rehearsing and performing 3. the straddle between (individual) products and (collective) processes

1. the issue of private versus public

‘Musical bedroom performance’ shows a contradictory of the joy and insecurity and the publicization of personal spaces. Thus, there started to emergence a blur of the boundaries of private and public. ‘They also complicate the boundaries between the domains of practising and rehearsing, as well as product and process.’

2. the vacillation between rehearsing and performing

‘By adding phrases about the still underdeveloped nature of their performances, the bedroom musicians explicitly try to shield their videos from contexts and expectations with which they are incompatible. Thus, this is an important way for them to reduce the negative consequences of the context collapse surrounding these practices.’

3. the straddle between (individual) products and (collective) processes

‘Though bedroom videos are usually produced and uploaded in relative isolation, they are ultimately meant to function in larger networks of other performances and interactions.’

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WEEK4 READING REVIEW&DISCUSSION

Reputational capital in ‘the PR University’: public relations and market rationalities

The writer used case study of university press officer’s work to analyse how this form of media relations PR stages competition between UK universities through media. What these universities compete is ‘reputational capital’. What’s more, ‘the PR University operates not only to promote an individual university’s market position, but also acts upon public debates about the social role, legitimacy and financing of UK Higher Education.’ (Cronin,2016) ‘The ‘PR University’ is an assemblage of HE cultures, PR practices and the contemporary media context,2 and includes material practices, discourses, values and an intriguing relation to belief.’ (Cronin,2016) Universities use mainstream media to publish information that less likely a ‘marketing message’. I found something really interesting in this article is the PR activities are a zero-sum game, some improvement of one university’s reputation may lead to loss of the other university’s reputation. It means all the universities have to take part in the PR activity or it will lose reputational capital. This essay has done 50 interviews.

Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (chapter 3)

Designing a qualitative study

For the first part, the author intends to provide an overview of and introduction to qualitative research in order to explain the common characteristics of qualitative research. After figuring them out, the second step is to find the differences between them(narrative, phenomenology,etc.). To begin with, the general definition of qualitative  research is introduced and the author highlight the essential characteristics of conducting this form of inquiry.the most practical part of this Chapter is that this book will discuss the types of research problems and issues which are best suitable for a qualitative study.for starters, this book is detailed guidance to design and plan a research.

The clear structure gives readers a map of the Chapter. The key questions for discussion are listed below:

🔼What are the key characteristics of qualitative research?

    In answering this question, the author uses Creswell’s（2013，p.44）definition of the process of research which is a flowing from philosophical assumptions to interpretive lens and on to th procedures involved in studying social or human problems. Then the author suggests us to find out a more specific characteristics in qualitative research. several  common characteristics of qualitative research are concluded as 9 points:Natural setting, researcher as key instrument, multiple methods, complex reasoning through inductive and deductive logic,participants’ multiple perspectives and meanings, context-dependent, emergent design, reflexivity, holistic account.

🔼What types of problems are best suited for qulitative inquiry?

    in terms of this question, the author briefly outlines several situations when it is appropriate to use qualitative research when:

1.a problem or issue needs to be explored;a complex, detailed understanding of the issue is needed.

2. we want to: empower individuals to share their stories, hear their voices and minimize the power relationships that often exist between a researcher and the participants in a study;we want to write in a literary, flexible style;want to understand the context or settings;to follow up quantitative research and help explain the mechanism or linkages in causal theories or models.

3. to develop theories when partial or inadequate theories exist for certain populations and samples or existing theories do not adequately capture the complexity of the problem which is being examining;quantitative measures and the statistical analyses simply do not fit the problem.           

🔼What research skills are required to understand this type of research?

    1.commit to extensive time in the field.

    2.engage in the complex, time-consuming process of data analysis.

    3.write lengthy and descriptive passages.

    4.embrace dynamic and emergent procedures.

    5.attend to anticipated and developing ethical issues.

🔼What are the features of a ‘good’ qualitative study?

    9 points(pp.47-49)

🔼How do researchers design a qualitative study?

    the author answers this question in 3 parts: preliminary considerations,phases in the research process and elements in all phases of the research.（pp.49-53）

🔼What types of ethical issues need to be anticipated during the process of qualitative research?

    Ethical issues need to be anticipated and planned for in designing a qualitative study. Ethical issues arise in every step of a qualitative study. So for researchers, we need to care about ethical issues at every stage of the study.

🔼What design structures are useful for a qualitative study plan or proposal?

The structure of a plan or proposal for a qualitative study will vary, and considering wags to engage readers is useful. We describe each of the six common parts, highlights the topics where there might be variation due to the inherent nature of different perspectives adopted in qualitative studies, and focus on the essential arguments that researchers need to address in proposal.

Cronin, A. (2016). Reputational capital in ‘the PR University’: Public relations and market rationalities. Journal of Cultural Economy, 9(4), 396-409.

Creswell, J., & Poth, Cheryl N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry & research design : Choosing among five approaches (Fourth ed.).

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WEEK3 READING REVIEW&DISCUSSION

Mobile Methods chapter 1

This chapter reviews various ‘mobile methods’ for studying (im)mobilities. The author ‘’examine an array of methods that in different ways capture, track, simulate, mimic, parallel and ‘go along with’ the kinds of moving systems and experiences that seem to characterise the contemporary world.’ (Büscher, Urry, Witchger, 2010) Investigations of how people, objects, information and ideas move and are mobilised in interaction with others reveal how actions – like moves in a game – are oriented towards and reflexively shape orders of social, economic and political relations (Wittgenstein 1953; Garfinkel 1967). The researcher first observing people’s movement, also observing the movement of objects, especially significant in observation is to see how people bring about face-to-face relationships with other people, places and events. Secondly, researchers have to participate in patterns of movement while stimultaneously conducting research and subsequently interviews people individually or in focus groups, as to how diverse mobilities constitute their patterning

of everyday life while on holiday. Thirdly, using mobile video ethnography. Fourth, time–space diaries. Here respondents record what they are doing and where, how they move during each period and the modes of movement. Fifth, there are varied methods that explore virtual mobility through texting, websites, multi-user discussion groups, blogs, emails and listservs, as well as older moving messages such as those conveyed on picture postcards. Sixth, there are art and design interventions concerned with imagining mobile alternatives and futures and experimenting with them. This involves playful appropriation of prototypes of mobile technologies, for example, mobile content-generation technologies (Coulton et al. 2006), location-tracking and context-sensitive technologies (Mann et al. 2003; Hemment et al. 2006; Ciolfi and Bannon 2007), location-based gaming (Benford et al. 2004; Licoppe 2009) and live 3D visualisations of movement for event management (Büscher et al. 2008). Seventh, mobile positioning methods can provide insight into the movements of large mobile populations, such as commuters or tourists. Eighth, capturing ‘atmosphere’. Ninth, researching the active development and performance of ‘memory’. Tenth, ‘real’ places are not necessarily fixed and can be mobile. Eleventh, the examination of conversations which are in many ways the stuff of life and central to how and why people are moving about. Twelfth, it is possible to research various kinds of activities and places en

route where certain sorts of movement are slowed down, refocused or redirected.

News of Baltimore p21-40

This article use nine US cities’ newspaper coverage about the Baltimore unrest examines to analyse the role of ‘localization’ of place and people to demarcate and characterize geography and its social conditions in a way that explained the need for local police violence and virtue in a quest not only to maintain calm on city streets but to maintain ideological control over the role of police and local undesirables.

The author geography, populations, and social conditions that appeared in 152 articles from nine city newspapers across the United States at the time of unrest in Baltimore.

The press has a longstanding role in the creation of dominant ideology in the US, specically when it comes to explanations of people and spaces of urban environments (English, 2011; Hirsch, 2002). Every location has its own social usages and meanings.

It is within the role of news myth—the journalistic storytelling of culturally resonant tales of similar situations to espouse meaning to a current issue or event— that some of the deepest meanings of dominant society are embedded, from issues of gender and race to those of nationhood (Schudson, 2005).

Büscher, M., Urry, J., & Witchger, K. (Eds.). (2010). Mobile methods. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk

Waisbord, S. (Ed.), Steiner, L. (Ed.). (2017). News of Baltimore. New York: Routledge.

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WEEK2 READING REVIEW&DISCUSSION

INSIDE CULTURE: RE-IMAGING THE METHOD OF CULTURAL STUDIES(Nick Couldry,2000,pp.1-19)

In the introduction of Couldry’s book, he firstly proposed that Raymond Williams’ question has not been dealt with. He admits that Raymond  has filled the gap in cultural studies but he is aiming at rethinking the issues and make up the vacancies and figure out the uncertainty.

Couldry tries to investigate in what direction cultural studies should go.

the question of method are put forward:

What types of things should cultural studies be doing?

What problems does it face?

and then Couldry states that Those questions necessarily take us through other questions, which we might call ‘personal’:

What is the individual’s place within cultural formations?

How are those formations involved in forming my voice?

What exactly is it that we hope to teach, or study, in cultural studies?

What we could draw from the question list above is a single underlying methodological question: what is the space from which cultural studies speaks?

Couldry gives a brief answer: cultural studies is an expanding space for sustained, rigorous and self-reflexive empirical research into the massive,power-laden complexity of contemporary culture.

In the second part of introduction, Couldry clarifies the ‘long dominative mode’ by Raymond(1961:321), admitting the importance of this principle. In discussing the image and principle of cultural studies, Couldry states that when the culture operates, it will imperfectly recognize equal rights. The actual culture involves concentration rather than the dissemination of sound; being represented by others does not speak directly in our own voice; the commercialization of speech and images is not completely open. This is a fundamental consequence of the irreversible link between cultural life and the capitalist economy."culture" is already a paradoxical term and this paradox is something that every individual may feel. The author utilizes Stuart Hall’s view to back up his statement.

What interests us is the problem concerning popular culture.The author discerns the popular culture and the dominant one. He thinks that popular culture is not simply ‘what we experience’, we have to study the much larger space suggested by this ‘not’: the shadows which popular culture casts, as well as the light it projects. Couldry points out that this general principle will go through the whole book.

Qualitative Research Methods for Media Studies (Chapter1.2) Author:Brennen, Bonnie S.

In the first Chapter, the author firstly offend the qualitative research method, claiming that compared with quantitative research method it can be insightful, enlightening, emancipatory and fascinating as well. the theme of the book is to provides researchers with specific instruction on how to undertake research using a variety of different qualitative methods.The aim of book is clear. the common qualitative methods are addressed in the book and they are relevant to media communication researches’ questions. the detailed approaches to conducting each qualitative method is shown in the book, which is practical and productive.

additionally, recent technological changes and advancements offer new strategies for researchers to conduct and evaluate qualitative research.

Techniques like framing qualitative research questions,interpreting the research findings and discussing on how to integrate theory with practice are mentioned in the book.some other issues like ethical issues are also included. combined with personal research experience, the author draws on Raymond’s definition of theory as the systematic explanations of real­ world

everyday practices, and it is this understanding of theory that guides this second edition of Qualitative Research Methods for Media Studies. He states that as a cultural materialist, I find that all documents of material culture, including newspapers, books, films, popular music, television programs, comic strips and current fashions, along with posts on newer media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, are produced under specific political and economic conditions, and that any or all of these cultural products can provide us with insights about our society at a particular historical place and time.(Brennen,2017,p2)

Importantly, Brennen points out that vital differences exist between Qualitative research methods and quantitative research methods. after comparing two research methods, the author explains how socially constructed realities are actually created through language.

for starters, the author gives advice that no matter what qualitative method researchers use, their choice of method is based on the questions they wish to ask.

this book helps us to understand that researchers use theory to make sense of their findings and to orient their work within a larger conceptual orientation.

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WEEK10 PRESENTATION

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WEEK10 PRESENTATION

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INTERVIEW 6 7 8 9

Interview 6 SHEN

1.Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes, of course

2.Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I first knew about this on social media platforms like renren.com and Sina Weibo, at about 4 to 5 years ago.

3.Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Well I think the appearance and popular of feminism is an unavoidable tendency during the process of the development of society and I believe that feminism is a part of the equal rights.

4.Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: equal, respect, independent

5.Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: neutral word

6.Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: I think so, because...you know, it is something that connected with the “political correctness” and I also have some communication with women in my work everyday, so I do have some awareness of feminism.

7.Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A:  Yes, usually something like the feminism campaign, bad news like sexual harassment, some marriage-related topics and discussion on the behavior and dressing of Chinese male and female etc. In fact, some of its remarks are quite extreme, I won’t search those things for purpose.

8.Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

I think it is because some so-called “feminist” in China are not the real feminist, but the female privilege, which means that female should have more privilege because female is the weaker one. I am very disgusted with this to tell the truth, but I’ll not pay attention to this.

9.Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

No I haven’t, because this topic is quite sensitive.

10.Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

I think... well to be honest, Chinese feminism haven’t reach the status to realize that feminism is to fight for the equal rights, they are just thinking about the privilege.

11.Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

1. Due to the one child policy and the patriarchal thoughts in China leads to the unbalanced development of gender ratio

2. The status of women has always been oppressed by feudal ideas, so that it cause too much negative emotion when feminist thoughts went into China

3. Due to physiological congenital structures, women are more likely to affected by emotion.

Interview 7 XUN

1.Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes

2.Q:  When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: The first year in the university

3. Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think feminism in China has a more serious polarization: one is those extreme one which means  ‘female hegemony’, and the other one is those ‘fake feminism’ and advocate incorrect values. Because of this, those who really want to advocate feminism in China were regarded as the ‘rural feminism’(a malicious calling for feminism in China). From my personal idea, I think that the real feminism is quite simple actually. Feminism means that everyone, both men and women has the rights to choose or reject something.

4. Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: equal, neutral, no label, no sterortyping, diversified and respect

5. Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: A neutral word

6. Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Of courses, compared with men, women are faced with problems, difficulties and challenges due to gender since their birth.

7. Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I have seen some of it like videos or articles. For example, the documentary of Jane Austin and some beautiful stories that properly explains what feminism is. On the contorary, of courses, some discriminatory opinion as well. I’m not searching these things for purpose but I am always quite sensitive with this topic.

8. Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Well in fact, even coins have two sides. I can understand why some people don’t accept feminism at all for China has been a feudal great power for thousands of years and the notion of feminism wobble the male privilege. On the other hand, those ‘fake feminism’ misuse feminism and make others have a misunderstand on it so that people may have a negative stereotyping on feminism. I feel quite helpless about this, I hope someday in the future, people can change their mind on it.

9. Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Yes! I’ve just done this today.

10. Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I think basically it is showing a positive tendency, more and more people are now aware of fighting for equal rights, but on the contrary, it seems that the the government’s policy direction seems to be different, so it is unclear that how will the development of feminism in China in the future.

11.Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: Well there may be many different reasons I think. Roughly speaking, firstly, the government didn’t take an appropriate leading role; secondly, the notion of feminism hasn’t been popularized; thirdly, it’s also decided by the features of social media, for example, Wechat is for a social circle of people who know each other, like colleagues, friends and families...but Weibo is a circle of strangers. The information on Weibo is too large and people think that nobody knows them so they would like to say their true opinions and don’t care what other people think. It’s so easy to go extremely. However on Wechat, things are different… Finally, I think we are lacking of researchers in feminism and gender studies, the main communication channel is social media so basically, feminism in China are lacking of theoretical bases.

Interview 8 YI

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I started to know about feminism from high school history classes. My history teacher introduced the feminist movements in 20th century at that time. When in college, touching more information, I started to think that feminism is a very important social issue.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think this is a method for women to obtain equal rights and opportunities for themselves through public opinions, movements, and struggles in the context of social secular rules. Under the guidance of feminism, women can organize and plan to reflect their demands to society and the government, causing public opinion. Again, this is a challenge to the existing social rules. Starting from feminism, more and more people are beginning to voice for their equal rights.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Equal; challenging; changing

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neutral word. The concept of feminism is not to say that we encourage women to grab benefits for themselves but to change the current situation of unequal social identity between two genders. The eventual purpose is not that women’s position is higher than men’s. It’s to say that they are both equal, including political position, economy and education.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Yes. The rights of women can not only rely on women, they need help from men, and vice versa. It’s a win-win.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about Chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Everyone's views on feminism are determined by their experience and level of education, so it is normal for negative comments on feminism to appear on the Internet. Especially in China’s environment, there are some remnants of men’s patriarchy in the tradition. Sexism prevails in all aspects of society. For example, people prefer boys and believe that only boys can pass on to generations. When looking for a job, they are also treated different genders differently. Chinese people have a relatively late understanding of feminism and they have limited access to them. Therefore, when information about feminism appears on the Internet, many people, especially those with low education level and older people will make negative comments based on their experiences.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I have less contact with feminism, and often through the Internet and reading some WeChat articles. What I’ve seen is that in 2015, five feminists were arrested. I saw this on the wiki. I found some related reports in order to understand the truth better. This content is: These five feminists have appealed for feminism and LGBT people’s rights through artistic performances and exhibitions. They were then arrested by related organizations and finally released under the pressure of international public opinion. I was deeply impressed by this because of the unfair treatment. The first time I heard this news, I felt that the five women were very brave. I also felt that the struggle was long-term.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: No. It is difficult to bring out some different opinions on Chinese social media. The police may find and arrest you due to your comment.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: The status quo is that there is a seemingly equal right for men and women, but if women want to fight for their legal rights as western women do, it’s not easy to achieve in contemporary China.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: The social ideology of Chinese male superiority is too deep-rooted. Women themselves are very inadequate in their understanding of their rights. They are in the weaker side of the society and have no ability or opportunity to fight for their own rights and interests.

Interview 9 WEN

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes,but I don’t know much about it.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: Recent 2 or 3 years. But I feel that I received a lot of influence of accesses to feminism. It may be I know more after I entered the university and get along with other people who know this much.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Nothing to feel. However, quite a large part of the people do not really understand feminism. They are pursuing the banner of feminism and equality between men and women but actually they are just women superiority or men superiority. Some people only one-sidedly emphasize some rights, benefits and even privileges that women should or expect to receive. They do not really treat women and men on an equal position. They regard themselves as weak and do not pay attention to their own growth and development. They only expect and demand. Men and society are unreasonably tolerant of their own deficiencies. This to a certain extent also debases women and feminists, and actively reduces the status of women below men.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Domineering, independence, emancipatory, unruly

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Maybe...neutral I think. After all, it’s kind...good and bad mixed.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Well...not so much. Know something, changing a little, but still be myself, you know.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about chinese            feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: I think there are two kinds of comments. One is that they just don’t what to know about feminism, not listening to any reasons or arguments. Another one is that people grab the part of immature ideas of feminism and misunderstand it. Besides, many women just follow these immature or...we can say...wrong ideas, regarding themselves as advanced feminists, saying some stupid opinions. No people like that. Chinese feminism still has a long way to go.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I can’t remember well. My friend told me that in Vatican City, there are some naked people shouted ‘God is a girl’? I don’t know...I think it’s too much. I don’t like it and can’t understand why they are so extreme.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Not very much. But sometimes if I feel touched for certain contents maybe I would like to repost.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: Extreme people are not to many but the traditional opinions are not easy to be changed. People know that feminism is something good but still hard to change our mind.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: Traditional patriarchal opinions, lack of education, phenomenon that people already have some misunderstanding and prejudice about feminism.

[chinesefeminism-blog]

Interview 5

Time: 2018/3/11

Gender：Male

Place: Skype

Interviewee: Liu Huinan, 24, Media

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: I have had some shallow ideas of equality between men and women from my childhood, but started to understand systematically from high school.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: This is a way for women to fight for equal rights. I don’t think if women are actually equal to men or not is not so important. What is important is that, for women, if we have certain rights, we must bear the corresponding obligations.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A:  -

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neutral

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: Yes.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about chinese            feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Many publicity stunts on feminism lead to the misunderstandings that feminism means women enjoy more benefits rather than equal rights. And many women think men should accommodate them for love. Actually I think feminism is not wrong, but over-feminism is wrong.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: I thought of an exhibition called ‘What did I wear at the day of being raped’. It’s a great example. Many women being raped are always asked the question like ‘What did you wear at that day?’ But actually from this exhibition we can know that most of them were not exposed wearing and even had little femininity. Some of them wore sportswears, even police uniforms when they were raped. I think it’s really disrespectful to women and feminism asking questions like that.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Yes

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A:  -

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: In essence, it is because the social environment and the women’s misplaced status.

[chinesefeminism-blog]

Interview 3&4

Interview3

Time: 2018/3/11

Gender：Male

Place: Social Hub

Interviewee: Zheng Yuekang, 24, Food Engineering

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: Yes.

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I looking something on Weibo, I see it inadvertently. Then I start to get to know about feminism.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: I think it’s literally reasonable.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Ideal, advanced for contemporary society, inevitable process of future.

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Commendatory term, at least neutral.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: A little bit.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about chinese            feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: The negative comment is not because most people think that feminism is wrong, but there is a contradiction between the social process at the present stage and the ultimate goal of ideal feminism. It needs to be step by step. It’s like....socialism is also still in its infancy? On the other hand, feminism on the Internet lacks a specific standard. Feminism itself is still on the primary process of development, so it’s easy for people with undesirable motivations to use it as a tool for their own profit, such as some bloggers who gain profits by posting chicken soup contents and inciting negative emotions on Weibo and etc. This is the reason for many men and women who originally understood and respected women’s rights then resistant to feminism.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: Probably more on Sina Weibo, although it is popularly recommended and often very confused, I generally support and understand the normal one.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Basically not, this is not something I can change and help.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: Confusion, there is no uniform standard, chinese feminism is easy to used by people with ulterior motives, but in some aspects is more advanced than some countries in the world. The public needs to be properly guided and scientifically developed.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: China hasn’t developed wevy well. The quality of the people and the economy are not well-developed. In such a situation, it is unrealistic to realize communism directly. The same holds true for feminism. It is unrealistic to make feminism developed advanced in a short time. Some chinese feminists are bent on developing feminism as the developed countries. The ideal is good but ignores the process. If there is an authoritative institution and correct appeal and guidance, let feminism and other parts of the Chinese society develop at the same time, and it will be getting better and better in the long run.

Interview4

Time: 2018/3/11

Gender：Male

Place: Social Hub

Interviewee: Xia yang, 22, Electrical Engineering

Q: Have you heard about feminism?

A: No

Q: When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: From my high school.

Q: What do you think about feminism?

A: Sometimes reasonable, sometimes extreme.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A: Respect, fair

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: Neural

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: No

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about chinese            feminism? And how is your feeling?

A: Nothing

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A: No

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A: Never

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A: I haven’t seen it.

Q: What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A: History, customs

[chinesefeminism-blog]

WEEK9

This week, we have done some interviews. Here are our transcribe contents.

Interview1

Time: 2018/3/9

Place: Social Hub

Interviewee: Cassie, 23, Student(Media and Cultural Studies)

Q: Have you ever heard about feminism?

A: Yes, I first heard about this before I went abroad, but things seem to be different on various social media platform. On Weibo, basically something not very good in fact, like “rural feminism” or and other  negative adjectives, but on facebook always very positive.

Q：When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I was in university, I first saw something about feminism, but at that time I felt that it doesn’t have much relation with me. After I came here and having some course of gender studies, I realized that feminism really has some close connect with me, my career marriage will always be influenced by the notion of equality between men and women.

Q:What do you think about feminism?

A：I think feminism is no  t only for the benifits of female, but male’s benefits as well. Sterortyping and a consolidated gender discrimination may also be a big press for male.

Q: Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A：aggresive, hard and lonely

Q: Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A：I think it differs from language. In English it seems to be a neutral word, while in Mandarin, it seems to be more aggressive, especially when some people misunderstand it and use this word for their own purpose. So from my personal point of view, in China feminism has much more negative meanings than that in western countries.

Q: Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A：Of courses, I think feminism has a really close connection with me. My career, my family and my marriage in the future, all of them will be affected by the development of feminism. My rights as a woman can be protected.

Q: How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about chinese feminism? And how is your feeling?

A：I think the growing of feminism has some influence on those people with vested interest, so it is unavoidable that there will be some counterattack in public opinion and...the consolidated inherent concept as always difficult to be changed.

Q: Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A：Basically in Weibo, sometimes on facebook as well, usually articles from some feminism opinion leader or some articles about the development of feminism like the “me too campaign”. But nowadays...some more articles about the gender inequality in workplace.

When I need to use these things in my essay, I will search for them in purpose, but usually I see those things in casual, but I will forward it when I have same feeling with it.

I think the reason why I can remember those things is that it is closely connected with my life in the future, I also want to avoid bad things like gender discrimination in my life and career in the future.

Q: Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A：I basically don't send related content. The main reason is that long long ago I didn't really understand this concept, I thought that women's rights had nothing to do with me, so I wouldn't send them. But now I have learned a lot about the content of feminism. I also think that I don’t know much about it, I dare not send it, and I’m afraid to say the wrong thing.

Q: What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A：I think the status of women's rights in China is still very optimistic. It is mainly because the environment does not support the development of women's rights. I feel that many national policies are against feminist rights. For example,  many feminist movements leaders were expelled from the rental house by the police.

Q:  What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A：I think that the problem is still about vested interests. Women's rights affect some people's vested interests, so they rush back. There is also a national policy that now has a tendency to make women return to their families.

Interview2

Time: 2018/3/10

Place: Skype

Interviewee: Kelly, 23, Advertiser

Q:  Have you heard about feminism?

A：Yes, I’ve heared about it.

Q:  When did you start to know about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

A: When I was in high school, I saw some news in the news. When I see these feminism information, I’ve notice that there are more information in European and American.

Q:  What do you think about feminism?

A：I think feminism fights for women’s equal status as men. I think this is very meaningful for women.

Q:  Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

A：Realistic, positive and brave.

Q:  Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

A: I think it is neutral. Because feminism itself is the declaration of women’s rightful right. Since it is a proper demand, then it shouldn’t be judged to be right or wrong.

Q:  Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

A: As for me, it’s OK. Women are in dominant place in my workplace. Also, I haven’t meet any unequal treatment in my life. However, the phenomenon of inequality between men and women in the elders is still very obvious.

Q:  How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about chinese            feminism? And how is your feeling?

A：Chinese netizens can be effected by public opinion easily. When one person stands out and expresses his/her negative views on feminism, many people only shows their agreement after reading. There are few people are really willing to seriously think about the implications of this matter. They do not necessarily understand feminism, nor do they also understand the status transitions that women are actually taking place in today’s society. Anyway, I was very annoying about those keyboard man.

Q:  Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms?

A：Yeah, on ZhiHu.

Q:  What is that?

A：Mainly different people's interpretation of feminist cognition.

Q:  By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose?

A：I haven’t taken the initiative to search, sometimes see the relevant posts.

Q:  Could you please describe a little for us?

A：Because many people now have an excessive interpretation of feminism, that women want to have higher status than men, or want to obtain more rights than men through feminist movements. But in reality, what women need is only the weakening of gender significance, not being materialized, assuming due obligations and responsibilities.

Q:  Why do you think you can still remember this context?

A：Because feminism itself is a very controversial topic, the appearance of such a positive message seems to be very comfortable, and it feels that some people are still sober.

Q:  What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

A：I feel they are resonable, it’s actually what I think.

Q:  Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

A：No, I haven’t. I almost never comment on controversial topics in social media.

Q:  What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

A：People are still at the first stage of learning about feminism. Too many people have excessive interpretation of feminism and lack proper understanding.

Q:  What reasons do you think that lead to this result?

A：The society does not give a clear attitude to feminism. At the same time, there are many pseudo feminists who use the feminist topic to exchange concepts in certain feminist events and cause people to misunderstand feminism.

[chinesefeminism-blog]

WEEK8

This week, we discussed about our report structure. Then, we can really do hard work on our report.

Title:

Abstract:

Introduction:

In traditional sense, feminists are actually who want to fight for gender equality in order to make real equal come true. Feminism plays an important role in the development of the society. Women have been oppressed for thousands of years in china. Nowadays, many gender discriminations still occur in china, feminists want to let people know the stereotype is wrong and must be change. They are actually doing good changes which benefit all the people.

But, when feminism was introduced into china it has been continued dispraised. Nowadays in the cyberspace, there are many malicious slander towards Chinese feminism. Chinese feminism has its own disparaging name “ZhongHua TianYuan NvQuan” which means Chinese feminism are like indigenous and countrified dogs. The phenomenon of stigmatization of Chinese feminism in the cyberspace is very severe.

Based on the social phenomenon above, this report is going to solve a core question: what are the reasons made Chinese feminism are stigmatized on the cyberspace.

This study is going to make it easier for people to understand why Chinese feminism are stigmatized in the cyberspace. The study is going to be 4 parts: the first part-literature review, this part will introduce the conceptual literature related to this topic; the second part is about the methodology; then the third part will analysis the information which are get from the interview and the focus group. Finally, there is a bibliography which according to the APA.

Literature review:

The study includes two main concepts: feminism & stigmatization. We will summary the concepts of this two and the study of different groups which are stigmatized in media platforms etc.

1.      Feminism & Chinese feminism

2.      Stigmatization

3.      Stigma of feminism

4.      Media Criticism

conceptual framework

method

1.     Interviews

2.     Focus groups

analysis/discuss

Bibliography:

[chinesefeminism-blog]

WEEK 7

This week, we want to refine our research question into a specific one. In traditional sense, feminists are actually who want to fight for gender equality in order to make real equal come true. Feminism plays an important role in the development of the society. Women have been oppressed for thousands of years in china. Nowadays, many gender discriminations still occur in china, feminists want to let people know the stereotype is wrong and must be change. They are actually doing good changes which benefit all the people.

But, when feminism was introduced into china it has been continued dispraised. Nowadays in the cyberspace, there are many malicious slander towards Chinese feminism. Chinese feminism has its own disparaging name “ZhongHua TianYuan NvQuan” which means Chinese feminism are like indigenous and countrified dogs. The phenomenon of stigmatization of Chinese feminism in the cyberspace is very severe. We want to focus on this special word “zhonghua  tianyuan nvquan” to analyse the stigmatization of feminism in china.

Based on the social phenomenon above, this report is going to solve a core question: what are the reasons made Chinese feminism are stigmatized on the cyberspace.

[chinesefeminism-blog]

WEEK6

This week, we think about the interview question. Here are the questions:

1.      Have you heard about feminism?

2.      When did you start to kown about feminism? Or from when you start to think that feminism is becoming an issue?

3.      What do you think about feminism?

4.      Could you use some adjectives to describe what the feminism is?

5.      Do you think it is a commendatory term, a derogatory term or a neutral word?

6.      Do you think feminism is related to yourself?

7.      How do you think about the negative comments on the internet about chinese       feminism? And how is your feeling?

8.      Have you ever seen some contexts about feminism on any platforms? What is that? By what means did you find it? Did you search it for purpose? Could you please describe a little for us? Why do you think you can still remember this context? What was your first response or feeling when you first saw this context?

9.      Have you ever brought out your opinions about feminism on the social media?

10.  What do you think about the status quo of Chinese feminism?

11.  What reasons do you think that lead to this result?