Decentralising feminism: Post-#MeToo narrative fragmentation on Weibo

The #MeToo movement played a pivotal role in shaping digital feminist discourse in China. However, increasing censorship on platforms like Weibo has altered the visibility and expression of feminist narratives. In the post-#MeToo era, discussions have become more dispersed and are now often embedded within broader social issues. Rather than being centrally organised, feminist expression emerges through diverse and localised conversations. This study addresses a gap in existing literature by applying BERTopic, a transformer-based topic modelling approach, to over 15,000 Weibo posts related to feminism. We identify four major themes, ranging from gender power and structural inequalities to women's identity and self-expression.

Our findings reveal a decentralised yet interconnected discourse structure, forming semantic clusters that reflect both thematic diversity and implicit cohesion, which we conceptualised as “semantic islands”. While platform moderation likely contributes to the fragmented nature of this discourse, feminist narratives continue to evolve through adaptive, networked strategies. This research offers new insights into the structural dynamics of Chinese digital feminism under conditions of constraint.