Digital Vigilantism and Chinese Digital Feminisms: The Shi Hang Controversy and the Double-Edged Sword of Online Justice Seeking

Digital platforms have revolutionized the feminist movement in China, offering an unparalleled platform for voicing grievances and seeking justice. Using the high-profile sexual harassment accusation against renowned screenwriter Shi Hang as a case study, news of which first emerged on the social networking service Douban, this paper explores the potency and peril of digital vigilantism in contemporary Chinese feminist discourse. While the singular anonymous post metamorphosed into multiple corroborating allegations, underlining the empowering nature of digital platforms, the proliferation of the discourse across Weibo and the divergent reactions it triggered raise poignant questions about the social context in which digital vigilantism and digital feminisms in China today are manifesting. The Shi Hang case demonstrates that social media platforms like Weibo offer unprecedented opportunities for women to expose sexual harassment and seek justice, but also highlight the inherent risks for digital feminism as it becomes the target of discourses around false accusations, wrongful incrimination, and misinformation. This study adopts a multi-method inductive thematic analysis and discourse analysis of the Shi Hang case on Weibo, in order to reveal a nuanced understanding of the evolving social discourse surrounding the case and its broader social implications for digital feminisms in contemporary China.