“Douyin is taming us”: Visibility,governance,and feminist discourses on Douyin

Abstract

Drawing on 14 in-depth interviews, this study examines how feminist content creators on Douyin navigate platform visibility, governance, and gendered censorship to disseminate feminist discourse. Findings show that participants position themselves as knowledge cultivators rather than influencers, emphasizing dialogic engagement and collective understanding over authority or personal idolization. To reach broader publics, creators strategically engage with platform visibility logics through practices such as trendjacking, while orienting their work toward what we conceptualize as critical visibility—valued for its capacity to foster reflection and dialogue rather than mere exposure. We introduce the concept of topic density to describe the structural barriers of conveying feminist ideas under conditions of audience skepticism, fast-paced short-video consumption, and political constraint. To remain visible, creators adopt extensive pre-publication self-censorship practices that function not merely as individual accommodations but as a depoliticizing force constraining what feminist critique can become publicly legible on the platform.