The Danmei Culture in Chinese Media and Society

The Danmei Culture in Chinese Media and Society offers groundbreaking comprehensive mapping of the Chinese danmei (boys love) cultural ecology, tracing its evolution from Japanese origins into a distinct, female-driven transmedia phenomenon.

Spanning from the late 1990s to the regulatory shifts of 2025, the book investigates how danmei subculture functions as a resilient yet incoherent counterpublic. In Part I, the literary heartland of danmei web novels is established, exploring the foundational world of creators and readers. Part II transitions to danmei’s fractured transmedia landscape, covering web dramas, audio dramas, manga, and animation. Employing a medium-specific approach, the authors analyze how specific platforms and fan engagements navigate the cat-and-mouse game between grassroots desires, platform capitalism, and state censorship. Theoretically, the work employs infrapolitics and queer world-making to examine how danmei creators and fans articulate alternative desires. Methodologically, the authors deploy immersive digital ethnography - an aca-fan approach - integrating longitudinal observations with in-depth interviews to provide deep, localized knowledge.

Essential for students and scholars in media and communications, sociology, cultural studies as well as gender and sexuality studies, this book offers an accessible guide to queer popular literature and cultures, digital cultural production, consumption and governance, and global fandoms.