Performing Eurasianness, Chineseness, and cosmopolitanism as racialized digital labor: sharenting mixed-blood children on Douyin

ABSTRACT

In this study, I consider the practice of sharenting mixed-blood children on Douyin as a particular case to explore how a racialized discourse facilitates and complicates the mechanism of sharenting in the Chinese context. Through digital ethnography and a qualitative content analysis of short video and audience comments on selected hunxue’er accounts, I explore how three racialized sharenting strategies – performances of Eurasianness, Chineseness, and cosmopolitanism, built around the concept of hunxue, or mixed-blood, are in fact forms of racialized digital labor for increasing visibility and monetizing creativity. The findings demonstrate that through a seemingly agentic and definitely conscious play of mixed identities, these sharenting strategies, exclusive to hunxue’er accounts, justify a distinctive use of children’s digital labor in Chinese society. This study also shows that in Douyin’s landscape, sharenting children from Chinese-Caucasian families appears to be more visible and favored, which not only reveals the insidious logic of global racial hierarchies but also reinforces the structures of dominance in the digital sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed-blood children
• sharenting practices
• Eurasianness
• Chineseness
• cosmopolitanism
• digital labor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The names of the hunxue’er are disclosed in their video content either in Chinese or English and are usually associated with their username or account name.

2 See the video and comments at https://www.douyin.com/video/6953587490406042915.

3 Fast-facts conversation video and comments https://www.douyin.com/video/7032473167360691494.

4 Georgia speaks three languages: https://www.douyin.com/video/7035218823946980623?modeFrom=userPost&secUid=MS4wLjABAAAAZCW_FsjrYGbp6A60hbkxUfZh0nNlwH6YaGyy6_CW3sc.

5 渝渝’s mother talks about teaching her son speaking different languages: https://www.douyin.com/video/6984556742545771815?modeFrom=userPost&secUid=MS4wLjABAAAAYM7NV3Qy1jZG4tXDBifcJFS6d_Oq-HaAH4jaPfnMy78.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xinxin Jiang

Xinxin Jiang (Ph.D., Bowling Green State University) is an associate professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China. Her research interests include critical studies in media, gender, popular culture, and intercultural communication. She has published articles in journals such as Television & New Media, Media, Culture & Society, Journal of Contemporary China, etc.