MONETIZING QUEERBAITING: BOYFRIEND DAILY CHECK-INS AS A STRATEGY TO ENGAGE QUEER FANDOM

Resumen

This study aims to investigate the increasingly prominent phenomenon of queerbaiting in Chinese social media, which is to bait and lure the queer audience in for an existing media text, through queer representations including erotica. With the development of streaming media and its innovative application in e-commerce especially during the COVID-19, social media platforms such as Douyin have become a rich site for economic and cultural analyses. This project is significant that since the Chinese government and platforms regulate queer content in a seemingly strict way, for example, those who express ‘abnormal’ sexual orientation will be banned. However, queerbaiting as a genre of media production still finds its way through short videos and gets away with tightened regulatory regimes. At the same time, Douyin’s huge monetization potential with e-commerce in various formats (e-gift-giving, sponsorship, advertorials) makes queerbaiting as a marketing strategy an indispensable part of Chinese social media that attracts scholarly and market attention. Furthermore, most queer content creators would self-present on the Douyin as straight especially when they engage with queerbaiting strategies, making both their media production sustainable in a tight regulatory regime and data accessible for my research. The study emphasizes a departure from fan-centred queerbaiting research and instead examines from the producer's perspective, dissecting the actions and goals of influencers to attract followers, monetize and profit by manipulating audience interpretations and queer imaginations as their strategies, at the same time, to navigate and protect themselves from homophobic regulatory and social environments.