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Desmond A. D. O’Doherty, York University, CanadaAbstract
This paper examines how tongzhi (queer) communities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China negotiate platform governance as a condition of cultural production and public belonging. Drawing on interviews with LGBTQ individuals and cultural creators, alongside close readings of fan practices, memes, short-video cultures, and platform policy materials, it traces how algorithmic ranking, content moderation, and commercial imperatives shape the forms of queer visibility that can circulate within Sinophone digital environments. In Mainland China, overlapping censorship regimes and risk-averse corporate enforcement incentivize everyday subterfuge, including creative punctuation, homophones, visual remix, coded references, and platform-switching that keep narratives legible to insiders while remaining ambiguous to automated and human reviewers. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, where formal restrictions are comparatively lighter, market and algorithmic pressures still privilege advertiser-friendly, commercially legible, and politically moderate representations while reducing the reach of more critical or non-normative queer politics. I develop the concept of coded visibility to theorize these practices as a situated mode of platform citizenship, one that leverages consumer-friendly aesthetics and layered communication to secure circulation while carrying critique through memes, fan rituals, in-jokes, and ephemeral content. The paper contributes to cultural studies debates on platform governance and to queer theory on uneven sexual citizenship by demonstrating how human and artificial intelligences co-produce the boundaries of recognition, participation, and risk across Sinophone East Asia.
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