Avoiding the Wrong Kind of Attention: A Look At Privacy Behaviors of Chinese Fandom Communities in a Censored and Surveilled Internet

Contributor(s)

Kelly Wang, Ruochen Liu, Amanda Tu, Ada Lerner, Tianshi Li, Abigail Marsh

Abstract

Chinese fandom communities have had to adapt to increasing censorship and surveillance on the Chinese internet, particularly when it comes to sharing stigmatized fanworks around queer and explicit themes. To investigate this from a privacy perspective, we interviewed 10 overseas members of Chinese fandom about their experiences with privacy and folk theories of censorship, which highlighted how fans were particularly wary of attention and stigma toward their activities in an environment with peer surveillance as an influential part of its censorship ecosystem--invoking a sense of privacy at a community level. Participants ultimately continued to engage in fandom and felt safe doing so, mitigating risks by anonymizing their fan accounts and using coded language, but could still be concerned about the future of their communities as they make compromises for its survival. At ReCAP, I will present some of our findings from this study and have some group discussions to reflect afterward.