Sara Liao

I am a media scholar and feminist, focusing on examining how media technologies, the state, commercialism, and gender dynamics are imbricated in the production of culture and the various forms of identities in a transnational setting, with a particular focus on broader Chinese societies. This body of work is interdisciplinary and transnational, with not only my commitment to gender equality and social justice, but also my efforts to collaborate with academics, activists, and students across disciplinary and geographical borders.

My upcoming book Viral Dissents: Being Feminist in Digital China (University of Washington Press, 2026) theorizes what I call unpopular feminism, a paradox in which feminisms become intensively visible while simultaneously policed, technologically amplified yet systematically stigmatized, transnationally mediated and racially coded—everywhere and yet unpopular all at once. I argue that feminism proliferates in China through commodified channels but remains structurally unpopular when it confronts entrenched power. This contradiction—feminism as accessible yet politically neutered—emerges in the public awakening to sexual violence in #MeToo and debates on victimhood shaped by gendered, racialized, and geopolitical hierarchies; in the political and technological infrastructure I called the platformization of misogyny, which monetizes and governs feminist expressions and practices; in the spectacularization of rage and gender antagonism caught within platform logics and nationalist gatekeeping; and in the selective celebration, censorship, or endorsement of feminist celebrities and publications depending on their alignment with dominant interests. Together, these dynamics situate the paradox of feminism’s mediated life within the collision of postsocialist gender politics, neoliberal market logics, and the global digital infrastructures that govern media culture. What emerges is a layered terrain in which the circulation of feminist discourse is robust, but its radical and collective potentials are often stripped away or sidestepped. The simultaneous rise of these mediated feminist forms couples with the internal contradictions of feminist movements, where popular feminist knowledges risks becoming moral orthodoxy and where intersectional struggles are often rendered invisible. Unpopular feminism forces us to reckon with the urgent challenges facing efforts to imagine solidarity, sisterhood, and feminist communities across divergent interests, goals, and futures.

My first book Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity of Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture (Pluto, 2020) focuses on the creativity and precarity of a group of women fashion designers, whose experience encapsulates the shifting cultural terrain in China. I have also published in highly regarded peer-reviewed journals, including Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, International Journal of Communication, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Journal of Communication.

My concurrent research interests are also represented in two major areas, one is the study of gender politics and feminist activism, and the other social movements and digital culture. For the former, I analyze the Chinese #MeToo movement and anti-sexual harassment campaigns, critically examining the witch-hunting public discourse and feminist efforts to counter it, investigating the intersection of digital media activism, higher-ed sexual scandals, and administrative solutions, and exploring storytelling as an empowering technique and coping mechanism of sexual wounds. I have also discussed how popular media culture is shaping and shaped by gender politics in the state-market complex of China regarding women’s representations in TV. For the latter, I illustrate the productive forces of emotions and affect in social movements and explore how nationalism tapped into a digital mentality to react to geopolitics. These two areas of studies mutually reinforce each other, offering both valuable insights in feminism and media activism, and policy/practical implications in combating toxic digital cultures and building and enhancing solidarity. For example, I explore how digital platforms, complicit with the official agenda on gender politics, manufacture misogynistic culture and its subsequent political and cultural impacts on feminist activism and Chinese digital culture, a phenomenon I called the “platformization of misogyny.”

I am a 2024 Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships in China Studies Fellow, a 2023 recipient of the Helen Award for Emerging Feminist Scholarship at the International Communication Association, and the Dean’s Excellence Award in Research and Creative Accomplishments at Penn State.

Book

Liao, S. (forthcoming). Unpopular Feminism: Popular Media, Technoculture, and Gender Politics in Digital China. University of Washington Press.

Liao, S. (2020). Fashioning China: Precarious creativity of women designers in Shanzhai culture. London: Pluto Press.

Refereed Journal Article

Liao, S. (2025). Engineering nationalism: Popular TV, ideological work, and the cultural politics of state propaganda in China. Critical Studies in Television, online first: 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1177/174960...

Liao, S. (2024). Women politicians, social movements, and misogyny in democratic struggles. Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images, 4(1): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.3998/gs.562...

Liao, S., & Ling, Q. (2024). Streaming feminism: Women-centered net dramas, global television culture, and feminist textual possibilities. Television & New Media, online first, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/152747...

Liao, S. (2024). Unpopular feminism: Popular culture and gender politics in digital China. Communication & the Public, online first, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1177/205704...

Liao, S., & Sun, L. (2024). Nationalism for sale? Transnational capital, gender politics, and policing the patriots in digital platform. International Journal of Communications, 18, 2479-2496. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijo...

Liao, S., (2023). The platformization of misogyny: Popular media, gender politics, and misogyny in China’s state-market nexus. Media, Culture & Society, online first, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344...

Guo, J., Zhang, Z., Song, J., Jin, L., Yu, D., & Liao, S. (2022). Femvertising and postfeminist discourse: Advertising to break menstrual taboos in China. Women’s Journal of Media and Communication, 45(3), 378-398. https://doi.org/10.1080/074914...

Liao, S., & Grace, Xia. (2022). Consumer nationalism in digital space: A case study of the 2017 anti-Lotte boycott in China. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, online first, 1-20. DOI: 10.1177/13548565221090198

Liao, S., & Ling, Q. (2022). The “little third:” Changing images of women characters involved in extramarital affairs on Chinese TV. Communication, Culture, and Critique, 15(3), 355-371. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tc...

Liao, S., & Luqiu, R. L. (2022). #MeToo in China: The dynamic of digital activism against sexual assault and harassment in higher education. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 47(3), 741-764. https://doi.org/10.1086/717712

Liao, S. (2021). Feeling the 2019 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB movement: Emotion and affect in the Lennon Walls. Chinese Journal of Communication, 15(3), 355-377. https://doi.org/10.1080/175447...

Luqiu, R. L., & Liao, S. (2021). Rethinking “the personal is political”: Telling the story of sexual harassment in China. Discourse and Society, 32(6), 708-727. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0957...

Ling, Q., & Liao, S. (2020). Intellectuals debate #MeToo in China: Legitimizing feminist activism, challenging gendered myths, and reclaiming feminism. Journal of Communication, 70(6), 895-916. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jq...