Click on the speaker or presentation title to jump to the abstract.
The University of Tokyo Speakers:
Dulan – Cyber Solidarity and Feminist Divergence: Ueno Chizuko’s Reception in China
Queensland University of Technology Speakers:
List of the Abstracts:
Amaël Cognacq – Working Around the Blackbox: Researching About the Spread of Masculinism in Social Media
This paper offers a reflection on the methodologies and findings of different researches carried out on how masculinist content spreads on social media networks (SNS). With the advent of algorithms fueled by artificial intelligence, SNS has come to offer tailored content to each user, a revolution which has been criticized notably for the harm of some of the echo-chambers it has created. Among them are videos and posts promoting misogynist and antifeminist ideologies, often summarized as masculinist ideas of the so-called manosphere. The recent TV series Adolescence has popularized the issue and academic research has scrutinized the creators and the receptors of those harmful content. However, little research has been produced on the algorithmic mechanisms themselves, which are responsible for the unprecedented spread of masculinism online, and by declination around societies worldwide.
The algorithms behind tailored content on SNS are often described as black boxes: on the one hand, because their design is protected as intellectual property and kept secret for competitive reasons, on the other hand, because the use of machine learning can generate outputs through pathways that are not fully transparent even to the engineers who built them. However, experimental research methodologies have been used to work around these blackboxes, which are discussed in this paper.
Dulan – Cyber Solidarity and Feminist Divergence: Ueno Chizuko’s Reception in China
This project investigates the remarkable resonance of the Japanese feminist scholar Ueno Chizuko in contemporary Chinese feminist discourse, where her work has become a significant reference point for challenging deeply entrenched structural issues. Despite Ueno not being directly engaged in Chinese activism, her powerful structural critiques of patriarchy, unpaid domestic labor, and neoliberal motherhood are widely circulated and adapted under conditions of censorship. This intellectual flow generates a potent form of “cyber solidarity” that transcends national boundaries, particularly within algorithmically and politically constrained digital publics such as Weibo and Douban. Drawing on transnational feminist theory and the concept of cultural translation, this research employs a refined mixed-methods approach to analyze the mechanism of this crucial instance of intra-Asian intellectual flow.
The study integrates two distinct, yet complementary, data streams to empirically assess the localized efficacy of Ueno’s ideas and to address the core research question of how this influence is thought to occur versus what actually occurs. The first stream establishes the Expert- Perceived Mechanism through Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of interviews with real-world activists, researchers, and opinion leaders. This phase captures the perceived influence and strategic adaptation of Ueno’s ideas, defining the elite and academic narrative of this intellectual transfer. This perspective is then rigorously contrasted with the second stream, which focuses on the Empirical Scale and Localized Meaning derived from a large-scale analysis of high-engagement grassroots discourse. This involves a Computational and Qualitative Content Analysis (Quant/Quali-CA) of thousands of Douban reviews of Ueno’s bestselling book, Misogyny. The Quantitative Content Analysis (utilizing techniques such as LDA) measures the actual scale and sentimental frequency of the discourse, while the Qualitative Content Analysis of highest-resonance comments assesses the localized vocabulary, thematic meaning, and adaptation of Ueno’s structural critiques by the new generation. By comparing this digital perception against empirical reality, the project asks: How are feminist ideas made legible, softened, or contested in cross-border transmission, and what does the resulting disconnect reveal about the negotiation of resistance and identity in censored digital environments?
By centering this intellectual flow between Japan and China, the research reveals a fundamental divergence between the expert-perceived mechanisms and the actual scale and localized adaptation of these structural critiques in the digital space. This finding highlights how grassroots discourse, driven by the new generation, negotiates resistance and identity. The work thus challenges dominant West-centric epistemologies and contributes a decolonial, intra-Asian feminist perspective on gender, technology, and activism within the digital sphere. Ultimately, this research models how regional intellectual exchange challenges simplistic assumptions about feminist globalization, arguing that gendered agency in Asia is a dynamic and adaptive process shaped within the contextual landscape.
Leo McDonagh – Tumblr made me trans: The social media platform at the forefront of the “transgender tipping point”
This paper will explore Tumblr’s long-term impact on the transgender community during its peak cultural influence from 2011 to 2018. Termed a “trans technology” by Haimson et al (2019), nowhere are transgender users more ubiquitous than the social media and blogging platform Tumblr, especially at its height during the “transgender tipping point” in the early 2010s. Before its banning of “adult” images in 2018, Tumblr provided an anonymous space to explore transness – such as by posting selfies, personal surgery or hormone results, or vicariously through fanart and “headcanons” of characters – while escaping the voyeurism, fetishism, and rigid gender roles of the mainstream.
Particular (and at the time, unique) affordances of the website, especially its tagging and reblogging system, influenced the folksonomy of the transgender community, for better and for worse. It allowed trans people to create a network of like-minded others, spread crucial information about gender and transition, and critiqued the traditional, binary, medicalized idea of transition that posed a barrier and source of shame for many. Users could experiment with identity in a safe queer utopia where everyone was anonymous, which sometimes eventually led to a material transition in “real life.” Non-binary identities were celebrated, requiring constant linguistic, visual, and narrative “gender work” in order to stabilize new gender labels outside of the binary.
Users challenged the “getting better” dominant narrative that expected trans people to be happier after transition, instead acknowledging the complex realities and struggles that come with post-transition life. Tumblr also functioned as a new kind of digital necropolitical space, particularly following the 2014 suicide of a trans female user, Leelah Alcorn. In protest of the transphobic outside world that deadnames and misgenders transgender people in death, Tumblr became an online memorial site, sharing selfies of the deceased using their preferred name and pronouns. These are some of the powerful ways that Tumblr operated as a counterpublic for transgender people to curate their own narrative and history.
On the other hand, Tumblr’s decentralized, highly ideological nature also fostered a toxic “vortex” (Cavalcante, 2018) of a paranoid queer community that often policed, punished, and “called out” its own members over their lack of adherence to the agreed social justice politics and queer taxonomy of the day, a precursor to modern “cancel culture.” While some were accused of not being “trans enough,” even those within the community disparaged some non-binary gender labels that had sprung up from the site as less legitimate and a purely digital construct, forming a hierarchy of gender “realness.” As with most English-language sites, American culture dominated, marginalizing international and multiple-identity trans users who then created smaller Tumblr communities of intersecting identities. As the main platform for modern trans culture sharing, the positive and negative effects of trans Tumblr culture still influence the global trans community to this day.
Yuluan Gong – Digital Intimacy and Vigilantism in VTuber Fandom: Audience Perspectives on Doxxing (tentative)
As an emerging form of online entertainment, VTubers (Virtual YouTubers)—creators who use 2D/3D avatars to stream on live platforms—have not only rapidly gained market popularity but also attracted significant academic attention. Existing scholarship has largely focused on how the use of avatars empowers creators in self-expression and identity exploration, alongside the technology that enables the VTuber phenomenon. However, being primarily situated on the internet and social media, this form of entertainment is also associated with serious issues such as cyberbullying, doxxing, and digital vigilantism (Lubis, 2023).
Shifting the focus to the audience, this study aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the complex relationship between VTuber fan culture and online attacks such as doxxing and cyberbullying. The core thesis is that the unique technological characteristics and interactive models inherent to the VTuber format—the performer’s dual identity (online avatar and offline individual), anonymity, and the intensive parasocial interactions fostered by live streaming—collectively amplify pre-existing dynamics within digital fandoms, such as celebrity worship and a sense of entitlement. This amplification positions fans as key actors in the aftermath of doxxing incidents, whether as participants, defenders, or bystanders, critically shaping the development of these events.
To investigate this phenomenon, this study will adopt the theoretical model of Digital Vigilantism (Trottier, 2016) to systematically analyze the role and behavioral logic of VTuber fan communities during doxxing incidents. Methodologically, the research will employ in-depth interviews with fans to qualitatively explore their experiences, emotional responses, and psychological processes when confronted with the doxxing and cyberbullying of VTubers, thereby uncovering the underlying psychological motivations for their varied reactions.
This research is expected to offer a unique perspective for understanding online harassment within the contemporary, internet-based entertainment industry and communities. Ultimately, the findings aim to provide valuable insights for the VTuber industry and its creators on how to better manage community dynamics and minimize the negative impacts of privacy breaches like doxxing in future activities.
Khang Huynh-Vinh – Reinterpreting Masculinities through Vietnamese Virtual Influencer: A Textual Analysis of Tho Bay Mau (Rainbow Rabbit)
Virtual Influencers (VIs), computer-generated characters (Berryman et al., 2021), have emerged as a new type of social media influencers to attract brand partnerships and captivate online audiences (Abidin, 2018). Extant scholarship on VI has demonstrated the commercial potentials (Ham & Eastin, 2025; Yu et al., 2024), aesthetic construction (Davies, 2025), virtual identity (Miyake, 2025), environmental sustainability (Lan et. al., 2024), and ethical concerns (Robinson, 2020). Notably, the growing body of literature disproportionately focuses on representation of hyper-feminine bodies (Ng Man Chuen, 2024; Miyake, 2022) and algorithmic data cultures behind their production (Bhatnagr, 2025), addressing its patriarchal capitalist ideologies of gender normativity. This paper aims to reconceptualise gendered VIs through the lens of masculinities with Tho Bay Mau as a case study. Drawing on textual analysis (Mckee, 2003), this paper centres on the sociality and commodification of Tho Bay Mau through his transmedial fan-made short videos, audience’s comments, and commercial videos for game collaboration on social media. We argue that Tho subverts traditional Confucian male breadwinner ideals (Rydstrom, 2023) through emotional expressiveness and unconventional self-focus—diverse traits more aligned with contemporary youth lifestyles. Ultimately, this analysis of Tho extends scholarship on representation and commodification of gender and virtual influencer.
Nguyen Do Doan Hanh – Performative Authenticity: Examining Masculinity and Labour of Vietnamese Game Livestreamers (WIP paper)
Game livestreaming has become crucial in online cultural production and identity negotiation, with game streamers performing for grassroot entertainment and more importantly to sustain platformed livelihoods. Central to game creators is their performances of authenticity, which Woodcock and Johnson (2019) have framed it as a form of affective and aspirational labour (Duffy 2017), the work of turning passions into careers, where streamers work to appear spontaneous, intimate, and real while enduring the pressures of consistency, visibility, and monetisation. In Western contexts, Ruberg and Lark (2021) highlight that game streamers often broadcast in living rooms, home offices, or blur their bedroom backgrounds to resist the highly feminised and erotic appeal of bedrooms. This paper speaks to these discussions but situates in Vietnamese contexts to demonstrate how authenticity and streaming from the bedrooms take on a different meaning in gendered performances and working practices.
Lynrose Jane Genon – “A Day In My Life”: Everyday “Digital Peacebuilding” By Muslim Young Women On TikTok
This paper examines how Muslim young women in the Bangsamoro, Philippines use TikTok to build everyday peace and amplify their agency in peacebuilding, alongside institutional peace processes that often exclude them. It examines how their engagement on TikTok shapes their identities and contributes to reshaping narratives about Muslim young women’s roles in society. By combining social media analysis with kwentuhan (talk-story), the paper demonstrated how Muslim young women use TikTok’s unique platform features—such as sound, text, trends, and performative elements like gestures and body language—to engage in peacebuilding. Using Cervi and Divon’s (2023) framework and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2023), the paper identifies key communicative practices, platform vernaculars (Gibbs et al., 2015), and interactions among young women leaders on TikTok. The findings reveal that (1) peacebuilding is an embodied practice for these young women, facilitated by the platform’s features; (2) they use travel vlogging and geotagging to highlight places as sites of political struggle; and (3) they leverage TikTok to create spaces for dialogue, educating, bridging differences, and addressing societal issues.This paper highlights how TikTok becomes a space where Muslim young women challenge traditional, institutionalized notions of peacebuilding, reimagining it as an embodied, intimate, and relational practice through the creative use of TikTok dialect.
Prawinda Putri Anzari – Intersecting Inequalities: Digital Exclusion of Former Child Brides in Indonesia
Child marriage remains a persistent gendered problem in Indonesia, where one in nine women aged 20–24 was married before the age of 18. Despite national and international efforts to reduce its prevalence, early marriage continues to be legitimized through cultural norms, socio-economic pressures, and legal loopholes. Feminist scholars emphasize that child marriage is not merely a matter of tradition or morality but reflects intersecting inequalities of poverty, gender, and power. Within this context, former child brides occupy a unique and vulnerable position, navigating adulthood while carrying the compounded effects of early marriage on education, health, and socio-economic participation. Adopting an intersectional feminist lens, this research extends these debates into the digital sphere, examining how structural inequalities continue to shape women’s opportunities and participation in the digital age. It focuses on the lived experiences of former child brides in Indonesia to explore how digital exclusion both reflects and reinforces broader social inequalities, contributing to a deeper understanding of gendered marginalization in contemporary society.
YUKO ITATSU LABORATORY, THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO 
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