CSGGE Lunch Series: Nini Zhou

On Thursday, February 4th we will hear from Nini Zhou, Ph.D. Student in the College of Media at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her talk, "Becoming Neoliberal Subjects: Algorithmic Governance of Feminist Activism in China" will be in-person and also offered virtually through Zoom.  Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.  

In this talk, Nini Zhou discusses how algorithmic governance shapes feminist activism and produces neoliberal subjectivity in China. While existing scholarship has examined how neoliberal logics are embedded in feminist activism in China (Liu, 2023; Peng, 2021; Yin, 2022), less attention has been paid to how neoliberal logics embedded in technological structures shape feminist activism. To address this gap, this project focuses on how algorithmic governance in China structures visibility, participation, and value of feminist activism, thereby producing self-governing subjects. Algorithmic governance here refers to platform mechanisms functioning as infrastructures of digital governance, including content recommendation, search ranking, hashtag moderation, and traffic distribution. These mechanisms not only shape what content becomes visible, whose voices are amplified, and which forms of feminist expression are permitted or suppressed, but also produce regulatory frameworks for user practices in feminist activism. 

This series is co-sponsored by the LAS Office of Inclusive Excellence.