Altman Yuzhu Peng | University of Warwick (original) (raw)

Papers by Altman Yuzhu Peng

Pragmatics and Society, 2024

The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed medical discourse to the forefront of everyday communication, bu... more The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed medical discourse to the forefront of everyday communication, but limited scholarly attention has been given to its intersection with social-mediated language use in the Chinese context. From a corpus-pragmatic view, we examined textual data collected from Zhihu, the most popular Chinese community question-answering site. Our analysis focused on the linguistic mechanism of evidential expression in social-mediated debates on Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Within the realm of medical scientific discussion, we identified a prevailing epistemic stance of doubt and uncertainty towards the efficacy of TCM, emphasising its socio-political significance. We also demonstrated how the ‘source of knowledge’ value and the ‘speaker commitment’ value of evidentiality interact at the semantic-pragmatic interface. Our findings shed light on a promising research trajectory for sociolinguistic intervention in the formal, descriptive line of evidentiality research, thus, advancing existing corpus pragmatics literature on evidentiality and epistemics in social-mediated communication.

Men and Masculinities, 2024

This article investigates how young Chinese male fans interpret and engage with mediated athletic... more This article investigates how young Chinese male fans interpret and engage with mediated athletic bromances, drawing from interviews with university students who follow sports games closely. The research uncovers complex dynamics wherein these fans contextually embrace and delegitimise the homoerotic aspects of mediated athletic bromances as they navigate their sports consumption. This phenomenon mirrors the multifaceted experiences of young men in present-day China, where the market and the party-state co-create a tapestry of overlapping, yet conflicting gender expectations. The findings illuminate the intricate relations between consumer culture and nationalist politics crafted in China, as well as their manifestations within the realm of sports fandom.

Feminist Review, 2024

In this essay, I present a scholarly account of the A4 revolution through the lens of gender, bas... more In this essay, I present a scholarly account of the A4 revolution through the lens of gender, based on my firsthand observations of the rally in London and anecdotes from fellow protesters from within China. The A4 revolution, also referred to as the White Paper protests, is a decentralised street activist movement encompassing a diverse array of Chinese dissidents. This typically includes college students, professionals residing in major Chinese cities, and members of the overseas Chinese diaspora. Collectively, they protest against not only the regime's extensive Covid-19 control measures but also its persistent crackdown on civil liberties. With female protesters playing a pivotal role in street activism and calls for women's emancipation being resonated through the rallies, the A4 revolution indicates a feminist trajectory for China's prospective political activism. Understanding this trajectory not only demands recognition of women's contributions to democratic politics but also emphasises the imperative of incorporating feminist agendas into activist initiatives.

Sage Research Methods, 2024

This article discusses the application of feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) in social m... more This article discusses the application of feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) in social media data analysis. The discussion is primarily based on a case study that uses FCDA to explore the stereotyping of sportswomen in China's social-mediated sports fandom. It emphasises the challenges and practical considerations involved in the design and implementation of the case study. In doing so, it provides insights into the research process and methodology, highlighting how FCDA helps to critically examine the male gaze and gender power dynamics within social-mediated sports fandom. By reading this case study, we will learn how to incorporate a feminist perspective into critical discourse studies in various research contexts. It is hoped that the case study will contribute to a broader understanding of the methodological issues associated with FCDA research practices.

Discourse and Communication, 2024

Drawing on critical discourse studies (CDS), this article foregrounds how British higher educatio... more Drawing on critical discourse studies (CDS), this article foregrounds how British higher education institutions respond to gender-critical controversies sparked by their staff members. Adopting Teun van Dijk's sociocognitive approach, we analyse the University of Sussex's crisis responses on Twitter (known as X today) concerning deplatforming campaigns against Kathleen Stock. The analysis unpacks how Sussex employs various discursive strategies to validate its institutional stance in the Stock incident. Sussex's communicative actions aim to mitigate reputation damage caused by the incident. However, such discursive practices simultaneously indicate the university's attempt to evade its institutional responsibility for equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) advocacy, neither do they address the reputation crisis caused by fellow Twitter users' propagation of counter-narratives. The analysis points towards the need for a sociocognitive analysis of crisis responses to hold higher education institutions accountable for their core mission, amid trans-rights debates unfolding in wider society.

China, Media, and International Conflicts, 2023

This chapter seeks to analyse the perceptions of NATO in China with a focus on social media users... more This chapter seeks to analyse the perceptions of NATO in China with a focus on social media users on Zhihu, the Chinese equivalent of Quora. With China’s rising status on the world stage, NATO has turned its gaze toward China. The military and political alliance target China in order to retain a sense of purpose in 2030. But NATO has a public image problem and faces public perception challenges worldwide. In China, social media users generally hold negative and critical attitudes towards NATO. They perceive NATO as (1) NATO uses China as an imagined/external enemy for its own existence; (2) NATO uses the “China-Russia threat” to comply with the strategy and interests of the USA while fighting for its own defence autonomy; (3) NATO uses China to divert public attention from internal to external affairs; (4) NATO is doomed; and (5) China shall prepare for war. It contributes to the strategic communication studies from the lens of Chinese perceptions of NATO and argues that policies rather than communication strategies influence and determine the public opinion in a target country.

Communications in Contemporary China: Orchestrating Thinking, 2023

Different from digital political governance, digital business governance involves no written laws... more Different from digital political governance, digital business governance involves no written laws or legislations. The regulation of Internet users’ everyday practice is enhanced by the design features of the Internet services. This chapter uses TikTok as a case study to address how giant Chinese high-tech companies regulate Internet users’ everyday practice through the design of social media applications. As a social media application, TikTok is primarily designed to enable Internet users to share and view short videos. With a particular algorithm design that feeds users with customised content, TikTok becomes the most popular of its kind in the Chinese social media market, and its popularity is arguably based on these unique design features. In this way, a case study of TikTok underlines how high-tech companies engage in profitable digital business governance in the contemporary Chinese context. The outcomes of the discussion contribute to orchestrating thinking in the East Asian rising power by articulating the entangled relationships between Internet users, capitalism, and authoritarianism.

Communications in Contemporary China: Orchestrating Thinking, 2023

Scholars have historically applied a top-down model to examine China’s communications systems. In... more Scholars have historically applied a top-down model to examine China’s communications systems. In this volume, we argue, Chinese communications network and its relationship to the state should be understood as that rather functioning similar to a musical orchestra, with the state as a conductor hopeful of faithful, talented, and homogenised musicians. The state’s desires, however, are only part of the story as to who shapes and informs the broad range of communications in China despite their role as conductor. State interventions oftentimes sit alongside people-oriented and commercial objectives that are also informed in light of opaque signalling by the state and their peers for what is at the time acceptable behaviour, identities, and national mythologies. In this volume, we consider these prospects from the angles of: internet censorship, news production, television entertainment, controls of foreign film imports, internet business governance, “Red Collectors”, public political participation, responses to the Hong Kong protests, issues of gender, propaganda campaigns, and children’s reading textbooks.

Asian Studies Review, 2023

Adopting a discourse-historical approach (DHA), we analyse how male influencers and their followe... more Adopting a discourse-historical approach (DHA), we analyse how male influencers and their followers co-construct a gender-state entanglement through social-mediated discussions about a mythologised historical figure, Zhuge Liang, on Bilibili. The analysis discovers that the historical figure is portrayed as a wen-wu masculinity archetype, whose imaginary is modified against current socio-cultural trends and intertextually linked to China's nation-building project. The masculinist valorisation of the historical figure reiterates the male takeover of nationalist politics as a defining feature of popular cultural production and consumption in post-reform China. The study contributes a meaningful extension to existing Three Kingdoms fandom research. It showcases how past memories and present events converge in Chineselanguage social-mediated communication, where heteronormative visions and worldviews are consistently and disproportionally overrepresented.

Social Media and Society: Integrating the Digital with the Social in Digital Discourse, 2023

This chapter incorporates and draws on the concept of affect to examine how users' discursive pra... more This chapter incorporates and draws on the concept of affect to examine how users' discursive practice is reshaped by the design of interactive digital platforms. An affective critical discourse analysis approach is developed to analyse the affective-discursive loop by using Internet users' practice of regional discriminatory discourses against Henan people as a case study. Through the comparison between users' differing practices on two major Chinese news portals-Tencent and NetEase, this chapter unveils the extent to which regional discrimination is amplified by the locative IP-address function of NetEase news portal's user commentary system. This chapter makes a methodological contribution in response to the CDS notion of discursive power in the digital realm.

Disrupted Knowledge: Scholarship in a Time of Change, 2023

This chapter discusses the interplay between politics and medical commentaries in Chinese society... more This chapter discusses the interplay between politics and medical commentaries in Chinese society, using the debate on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as a case study. Running parallel to the global trend during the COVID-19 pandemic, the politicisation of public health affairs is most tellingly revealed by the intensified debate on the efficacy of TCM treatment for infected patients in China. This chapter addresses this phenomenon by analysing Internet users’ postings on the most popular Chinese-language community question-answering (CQA) site – Zhihu. The analysis demonstrates that a Zhihu user’s perspectives on TCM treatment are often influenced by their political views. In this way, the debate becomes a site of political critique, which encourages Zhihu users to appropriate medical commentaries to engage with public affairs. The politicisation is indicative of the intersection of science and politics in China at a time when public health has become an ever more important topic.

China, Media, and International Conflicts, 2023

This introductory chapter provides context for studying media and conflict relations with a focus... more This introductory chapter provides context for studying media and conflict relations with a focus on China in the current digital and transnational media ecology. It highlights the significance of researching China as a rising power from the Global South in world geopolitics and justifies the necessity of de-Westernising media and conflict studies as well as advancing theoretical models by advancing an “inside-out” and “outside-in” approach. This anthology explores the role media plays in international conflicts, including but not limited to the US–China trade war, the Sino-Indo conflict, the Senkaku–Diaoyu islands disputes, the War on Terror, the Syrian crisis, and the Palestine–Israel conflict.

Feminist Review, 2023

This article analyses how performatively heteronormative, male teenage Chinese fans consume sport... more This article analyses how performatively heteronormative, male teenage Chinese fans consume sports games through the prism of masculinity, using secondary school students' engagement with the NBA (National Basketball Association) as a case study. Drawing on focus groups of 23 participants, we discover that male teenage sports fans constantly evoke elite NBA athletes as male ideals to define a desirable, heteronormative wen-wu masculinity specific to the post-reform era. In this process, they often engage in a double-standard practice, manifesting as their appropriation of the CP (coupling) rhetoric to "ship" athletes and their problematisation of heterosexual women and LGBTQ fans' similar usage of it. This double-standard practice constitutes an attempt to monopolise the interpretation of masculinity both within and outside of the sporting context. It sheds light on the heteronormative male cohort's rejection of alternative masculinities, underscoring how aspects of gender politics unfolding in wider society are reflected in China's teenage sports fandom.

Discourse, Context & Media, 2022

As the first edition of the Olympics including transgender sportswomen, Tokyo 2020 brought trans-... more As the first edition of the Olympics including transgender sportswomen, Tokyo 2020 brought trans-rights debates to the forefront of global sports spectatorship during the summer of 2021. In this article, we adopt a dialectical-relational approach to address how anti-trans sentiments unfold in male Chinese sports fans’ social-mediated communication. Based on textual analysis of posts retrieved from Hupu, the research reveals that anti-trans sentiments are largely informed by an essentialist notion of sex, which considers it to be a purely biological construct that is paramount in policymaking, being perpetuated in the process of China’s modernisation. Anti-trans discourses manifest in the sampled postings tend to converge with China’s official nationalist rhetoric, projecting critical voices against liberal-progressive values and Western-style democracy. The research findings shed new light on the dialectical relations between nationalist politics and anti-trans sentiments and, by extension, queerphobic views in China’s sports fandom, pointing towards the heteronormative monopoly of public discourses in sport and beyond.

Feminist Media Studies, 2022

This essay offers a timely analysis of how the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian warfare is observed in China ... more This essay offers a timely analysis of how the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian warfare is observed in China through a gendered prism. Accounting for an anti-West axis in China’s current political climate, we articulate how misogyny and nationalism converge in Chinese social media users’ discussions about the military crisis currently unfolding in East Europe. This is revealed by a vulgar interpretation of the Russo-Ukrainian relationship and the sexualisation of Ukrainian/Russian women, which are both widespread in the Chinese-language social media sphere. With the patriarchal specificities of the Party-State polity in mind, the discussion yields a feminist perspective to foreground China’s nationalist politics.

Global Media and Communication, 2022

This article aims to determine how digital nationalism influences gender politics in the context ... more This article aims to determine how digital nationalism influences gender politics in the context of gender-issue debates on Chinese social media platforms. To this end, I present an original case study, collecting empirical data from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site – Zhihu. By using a mixed-method research design, consisting of content analysis (CA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA), I explored gender-issue debates between Chinese Internet users. The analysis reveals how such debates inform divided opinions between women and men Internet users, and how misogynistic men invoke a nationalist discourse to distort the debates. The findings shed new light on the dynamic interplay between digital nationalism and gender politics.

Critical Discourse Studies, 2022

This article offers a timely, critical analysis of the male gaze upon sportswomen in male Chinese... more This article offers a timely, critical analysis of the male gaze upon sportswomen in male Chinese fans' consumption of sporting megaevents. We use the most popular Chinese-language sports fandom platform, Hupu, as the data repository and scrutinise the threads of male Hupu users' postings about two elite sportswomen at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as the case studies. Drawing on feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA), we elucidate the discursive strategies that male Chinese fans adopt to sexualise sportswomen and trivialise their accomplishments. The research findings showcase how China's sports fandom emerges as a masculine terrain, where men's visions of asymmetrical gender power relations are discursively negotiated and rationalised.

Feminist Media Studies, 2022

This article explores Chinese Internet users' discussions about Jacinda Ardern's maternity leave ... more This article explores Chinese Internet users' discussions about Jacinda Ardern's maternity leave in the wake of her being elected as the Prime Minister of New Zealand, based on an analysis of postings retrieved from the most popular Chinese community question-answering (CQA) site-Zhihu. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), with the assistance of content analysis (CA), we reveal that Zhihu users' assessments of Ardern's electoral success are of a gendered divide in which women and men largely constitute the opposing opinion camps. In particular, male Internet users chiefly direct the discussion, attempting to rationalise the unsuitability of female politicians in Western-style democratic elections. In this process, they also legitimise the return of patriarchal orders to China, reflecting a domestic orientation of their engagement with international politics. The research findings shed light on the gender-politics nexus established in Chinese-language social media discourses.

International Journal of Communication, 2022

This article aims to explore how racism plays out in China’s sports fandom in the wake of the Bla... more This article aims to explore how racism plays out in China’s sports fandom in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement sweeping across the globe. To this end, we conducted a case study of basketball fans’ postings on the most popular Chinese-language sports fandom platform – Hupu. The research discovered that the often-negative assessments of the BLM movement established on Hupu were largely informed by racism deeply held in traditional Chinese thinking, which provided the grounding for Chinese sports fans to appropriate racial discourses to assess progressive equal-rights politics in Euro-American societies. The trajectory of such a discursive practice was twofold, enabling these sports fans to rationalise their political views pertaining to both international and domestic arenas. The research findings urge scholarly attention to the dynamic interplay between regional popular cultures and global equal-rights politics in the digital age in China and beyond.

Drawing on uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, the current research investigates how social med... more Drawing on uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, the current research investigates how social media users exploit different media affordances to satisfy their motives and how such motives are shaped by their personalities. A cross-sectional survey among college students (N ¼ 190) was conducted to examine their most frequently used social media platforms, use motives, and perceived media affordances. Their personalities were also assessed along the Big Five and narcissism. An exploratory factor analysis yielded five broad categories of social media use motives. Structural equation modeling results revealed that social media use motives were differentially associated with affordances and that personalities play an influential role in shaping individuals' use motives and affordance preferences. The findings are discussed in relation to the theoretical contributions to the U&G approach as well as the practical implications to social media platform design and development.

Pragmatics and Society, 2024

Men and Masculinities, 2024

Feminist Review, 2024

Sage Research Methods, 2024

Discourse and Communication, 2024

China, Media, and International Conflicts, 2023

Communications in Contemporary China: Orchestrating Thinking, 2023

Asian Studies Review, 2023

Social Media and Society: Integrating the Digital with the Social in Digital Discourse, 2023

Disrupted Knowledge: Scholarship in a Time of Change, 2023

China, Media, and International Conflicts, 2023

Feminist Review, 2023

Discourse, Context & Media, 2022

Feminist Media Studies, 2022

Global Media and Communication, 2022

Critical Discourse Studies, 2022

Feminist Media Studies, 2022

International Journal of Communication, 2022

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2024

The post-1970s reform and opening up has not only reconnected China to the global economy but als... more The post-1970s reform and opening up has not only reconnected China to the global economy but also profoundly changed its socioeconomic structure and the lived experience of its citizens. Lisa Rofel (2007) has explored how desires are reconstructed in post-reform China, focusing on the way in which public culture showcases the dual (re)shaping of people’s changing everyday life experiences by the authoritarian governmentality and the neoliberal economy specific to the Chinese context. In Dreadful Desires: The Uses of Love in Neoliberal China, Charlie Yi Zhang further advances the debate by incorporating affective analyses into his theoretical approach. His work strives to explain how notions of love are reinterpreted in such a way that conceals post-reform China’s structural inequalities and neocolonial ambitions, thus rendering legitimate both the government and the market economy’s regulations of the population.

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 2022

Today, public relations (PR) research faces two major issues. Since being defined in the early 20... more Today, public relations (PR) research faces two major issues. Since being defined in the early 20th century, PR has been entrenched as Anglocentric terrain being overwhelmingly built upon Euro-American practitioners with researchers’ intellectual intervention focusing on Western capitalist experiences (Holtzhausen & Voto, 2002). Second, while having facilitated the maturation of the subject area, James E. Grunig’s theorization of PR as organizational behaviour has simultaneously led to positivism and quantitative measurement being unreflectively accepted by a large cohort of researchers until today (Sison, 2016). Such a situation reflects the need to decolonize PR. The anthology, edited by Robert E. Brown, a professor emeritus at Salem State University, Burton St. John III, Professor of Public Relations at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and Jenny Zhengye Hou, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Communication at the Queensland University of Technology, represents one of the innovative projects addressing the longstanding discipline ‘silo’ via a humanistic lens rooted in both Western and Chinese philosophies.

Chinese Journal of Communication, 2018

Since the establishment of the communist Chinese regime, arranged marriages have been forbidden u... more Since the establishment of the communist Chinese regime, arranged marriages have been forbidden under the law, which has provided all Chinese citizens with the right to marry whomever they wish (Pimentel, 2000, pp. 32–33). However, love and intimacy have been sensitive and private topics in the Chinese context until recently when the theme began to be discussed by the masses upon its appearance in public entertainment in the form of reality TV dating shows (Yang, 2017, p. 9). Among the TV programs in this genre, If You Are the Only One, the Chinese version of the popular British dating show Take Me Out, is the most recent and most influential in contemporary China. Dr. Chao Yang’s book could not be more timely. It is the first academic publication to provide an in-depth analysis of the interplay between young Chinese peoples’ consumption of this dating show and their understanding of love and intimacy.

Routledge, 2023

Using the analogy of an orchestra, the book looks at the ways in which the Party-state conducts c... more Using the analogy of an orchestra, the book looks at the ways in which the Party-state conducts communications in China. Rather than treating China's communications system as purely one of centralised top-down control, this book proffers that it is the combination of the government through its state policies, the propaganda bureau's campaigns, commercial consumer culture, digital and traditional media platforms, celebrities, entertainers and journalists, educators, community interest groups, and family and friends, who all contribute to the evolution of how ideas are perpetuated, enforced, and legitimised in China. Covering themes such as censorship, surveillance, national narratives onscreen and in everyday life, political agency, creative work, news production, and gender politics, this book gives an insight into the complex web of conditions, objectives, and challenges that the Chinese leadership and commercial interests face when orchestrating their visions for the nation's future. As such, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, Chinese politics, and Chinese Studies.

This book focuses on China’s media diplomacy and its interplay with a range of international conf... more This book focuses on China’s media diplomacy and its interplay with a range of international conflicts. It assesses the representation and framing of China, as well as the perception and reception of China’s media communication in relation to various crises and conflicts. Including detailed analyses of many cases, it highlights the complex, fluid and dynamic relationship between media and conflict, and discusses how this both exemplifies and also affects China’s relations with the outside world. In addition, in contrast to most existing studies of mediatized conflict in the digital age, it provides a very valuable non-Western perspective.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

This book makes an original contribution to the field of feminist cultural studies through an ana... more This book makes an original contribution to the field of feminist cultural studies through an analysis of the gender-politics axis established in China’s digital public sphere. Whilst a growing body of literature in contemporary feminist cultural studies has turned attention to the Chinese environment, scholarship remains limited in exploring the intersection of gender and politics in the context of Chinese digital cultures. This book addresses this timely topic. It will appeal to both scholars and students interested in exploring the complex, dynamic interplay between digital cultures, public expressions, as well as representations and perceptions of gender reflected in Chinese Internet users’ everyday communicative practice from a feminist media studies perspective.