Analyzing the diffusion of feminist discourses on Chinese social media: A case study of the 2022 Tangshan restaurant attack

Abstract

Network platforms have ushered in a novel propagation model for feminist discourses. The emergence of oriental feminism in society has led to gender-based public opinions surrounding public events becoming a trending topic on Chinese social media. This study uses the 2022 Tangshan restaurant attack as a case study, an incident that sparked widespread discussions across China in 2022. The research gathered 366,602 network communication nodes within a week and examined the communication networks of three types of content nodes (information, opinion, and appeasement) using the complex network modeling method. The findings revealed that all three types of information communication networks exhibit an apparent scale-free characteristic, and the "key minority" of nodes significantly affects information communication. Information-type and appeasement-type Weibo display notable similarities in the quantity and degree distribution of nodes within the communication networks and in the information decay rate. Moreover, authoritative information issuers have become the primary catalyst for information propagation. Conversely, opinion-type Weibo has the widest communication network diameter and features a high degree of participation, multilevel propagation, and a slow decay rate. This indicates that the interaction between opinion leaders and netizens has enhanced the depth and breadth of information diffusion for opinion-type Weibo.