Feminist Voices under the Lens of ‘Barbie’: An Analysis of Discourse Transmission and Mass Resonance in XiaoHongShu

Abstract

Social media platforms are revolutionizing the way users communicate by increasing the exposure to highly stigmatized issues in the society. Feminism is one such topic that recently took over social media. This paper studies the attributes of XiaoHongShu user toward the feminism related topics, by content analysis of the online posts via #Barbie on XiaoHongShu, a sharing platform. The findings show that majority of XiaoHongShu user have positive attitudes to feminism-related topics in Barbie movie by analyzing the posts and comments are shared on this platform. Besides, XiaoHongShu commentators are mainly focused on eleven topics related to feminism: gender consciousness and self-perception, gender equality and affirmative action, gender discrimination, gender violence, gender roles, body perception and self-confidence, gender image, gender economics, female autonomy, female bonds and friendship and others. This research indicated that social media platforms have proven to be fertile ground for movements such as feminism, facilitating the dissemination of perspectives and the fostering of dialogue.