About

Sara Liao is an assistant professor of Media Studies and Asian Studies at Penn State. She is a media scholar and feminist with a Ph.D. in media studies from the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas. Her research investigates how media technologies, the state, consumerism, and gender dynamics are imbricated in the production of culture and the various forms of identities in a transnational setting, with a focus on broader Chinese societies. Her recent book, Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity of Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture, published by Pluto in 2020, explores the creativity and precarity of women fashion designers within China's shifting cultural landscape. She has published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Journal of Communication, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Chinese Journal of Communication. Currently, she is working on research related to the feminist movement in China and activism against sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny. She is interested in teaching topics related to global communication, gender and media, and critical cultural theories.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Gender studies
• Political science
• Media studies
• Advertising

Selected publications

• Engineering nationalism: Popular TV, ideological work, and the cultural politics of state propaganda in China

  Critical Studies in Television The International Journal of Television Studies · 2025-05-10 · 1 citations

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  This study examines China’s revitalized state propaganda through the lens of new mainstream TV genres in the streaming era. Streaming platforms enable the TV industry to recalibrate commercial and ideological priorities, influencing the content, style, and aesthetics of revolutionary narrative dramas through digital marketing and audience engagement. Analyzing the production and reception of The Awakening Age , I argue that its widespread acclaim demonstrates the success of streaming propaganda. These productions modernize portrayals of party history and national identity while leveraging marketing strategies tailored to youth culture, consumption habits, and viewing patterns.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding <i>quan</i> in feminist activism and queer articulations: Digital media and rights practices in China Jia Tan, <i>Digital Masquerade: Feminist Rights and Queer Media in China</i> . New York: NYU Press, 2023, 208 pp, ISBN: 9781479811847.

  Dialogues on Digital Society · 2025-01-24

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• Feminisms with Chinese Characteristics Edited by Ping Zhu and Hui Faye Xiao. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2021. 408 pp. $39.95 (pbk). ISBN 9780815637257

  The China Quarterly · 2024-04-15

  article1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Unpopular feminism: Popular culture and gender politics in digital China

  Communication and the Public · 2024-08-02 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this essay, I discuss feminist activism and gender politics in the #MeToo movement and post-MeToo environment in China. I situate feminism in the country’s increasingly digitalized, commercialized, and controlled media ecosystem, where unpopular feminism reflects the intentional control of feminist visibility and, therefore, the difficulty to access feminist content and the disidentification of the feminist label. Also evident is the grip of the state-market complex on the discursive rights for women’s emancipation and the struggle over meanings of feminism as only visibility or also as a form of politics that divides us while simultaneously reimagining and rebuilding various forms of communities. Feminism today is both a popular genre to be consumed and a minority political pursuit. I also document the interweaving of feminist politics in contemporary China through gendered, classed, racialized, and ethno-national discourses in transnational encounters.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Streaming Feminism: Women-centered Net Dramas, Global Television Culture, and Feminist Textual Possibilities

  Television & New Media · 2024-08-20 · 5 citations

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  In this study, we investigate the influence of streaming platforms, with their relatively new industrial arrangements and relations with the media regulatory structure, on the cultural production of dramas in China. We focus on women-centered net dramas to demonstrate how feminist discourses found a place on streaming platforms, thereby opening up creative yet vulnerable textual possibilities for reflection on gender politics. We situate the production of these net dramas within the political economy and technological conditions of the streaming industry and further consider the implications of such mediated feminism for the pursuit of gender equality in China. Our examination of feminist discourses in streaming culture also resonates with the ongoing global transformation of cultural productions in the television industry.

  PublisherDOI

• Women Politicians, Social Movements, and Misogyny in Democratic Struggles

  Global Storytelling Journal of Digital and Moving Images · 2024-04-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In this essay, I investigate the relationship among women in politics, social movements, and misogyny through an examination of public discourse surrounding women politicians—in particular, Carrie Lam, the former chief executive of Hong Kong. The participants in a series of protests in Hong Kong against an anti-extradition bill that began in 2019 generated a large volume of audiovisual materials for the purpose of raising social consciousness, conducting civic education, and creating networks for solidarity. Many of these protest materials contained blatantly misogynistic messages targeting pro-establishment women politicians. I focus on women leaders to explore gender politics in social movements. In assessing the public discourse about Lam during the 2019 movement, I demonstrate that gender politics is consistently inscribed within social movements in postcolonial Hong Kong, in which context the progressive pursuit of democracy, self-determination, and freedom remains imbued with patriarchal culture, including paternalism. This patriarchal culture, unsurprisingly, combines seamlessly with sexism, misogyny, and a gendered imagination of the city’s possible political futures.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• :<i>Weibo Feminism: Expression, Activism, and Social Media in China</i>

  Signs · 2024-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• :<i>Dreadful Desires: The Uses of Love in Neoliberal China</i>

  Signs · 2023-09-01

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• The platformization of misogyny: Popular media, gender politics, and misogyny in China’s state-market nexus

  Media Culture & Society · 2023-01-15 · 68 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study aims to map out the popular phenomenon of misogyny in the specific techno-social configuration buttressed by China’s state-market nexus. With a case study of a controversy involving the standup comedian Yang Li and the luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz on the microblogging platform Weibo, I highlight the ‘platformization of misogyny.’ The conceptualization refers to the way that a platform is evoked as tools to manufacture and amplify misogyny. Weibo has this effect both through its design, features, and algorithmic shaping of sociality and through its users’ appropriation of its affordances. On top of that, the platform also engenders a form of governance that is deeply enmeshed in the commercialization of internet opinion, suggesting a techno-nationalist mode of state control that is exercised from afar and deeply imbued with patriarchal and misogynistic characteristics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The “Little Third”: Changing Images of Women Characters Involved in Extramarital Affairs on Chinese TV

  Communication Culture and Critique · 2022-02-22 · 8 citations

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  Abstract For this study, we analyzed the changing images of women characters involved in extramarital affairs in three Chinese TV dramas—Come and Go (CG; Hubei TV &amp; Guangxi TV, 1998), Dwelling Narrowness (DN; Beijing TV &amp; Dragon TV, 2009), and Nothing but Thirty (NT; Dongfang TV &amp; Tencent Video, 2020). We argue here that shifting gender relationships, evolving political, economic, and technological conditions relating to the media industry, and a transition in the broader social environment have motivated a return to patriarchal moral discourse on Chinese TV. Specifically, in keeping with this discourse, extramarital affairs have come to be presented as immoral, primarily for the women involved—the “little third” of the title, this being the literal translation of the Mandarin term for “mistress.” We documented this return to patriarchal moral doctrines that are intended to discipline women and limit the diversity and nuance of culturally accepted forms and expressions of sexual attraction and romance on Chinese TV in case studies of the three programs.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Qi Ling

  Beijing Jiaotong University

  3 shared

• Luwei Rose Luqiu

  2 shared

• Duan Yu

  Chinese University of Hong Kong

  1 shared

• Francis Lee

  1 shared

• Anthony Fung

  1 shared

• Grace Xia

  1 shared

• Jinhong Song

  Hebei University

  1 shared

• Ziwei Zhang

  Minnesota Department of Education

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D. in Media Studies, Radio-Television-Film

  University of Texas at Austin

  2017