Creating platformized acoustic milieus: Chinese rural women’s voices in <i>lianmai</i> counseling livestreaming on Douyin

This article explores the lianmai (connecting-mics; 连麦) livestreaming practices of Ling, an amateur counselor who advises rural women in China. Lianmai is a relatively understudied, sound-based livestreaming interactive format that allows hosts to connect with their audience through real-time audio conversations. Wang develops the concept of ‘acoustic milieus’ as a theoretical alternative to ‘soundscapes’ to understand the sonic as a dynamic, participatory and sentient process. Building on this concept, the article argues that Ling’s lianmai livestreaming creates a ‘platformized acoustic milieu’, a sonic ecology that engages with the senses and affect but is also structured by the affordances of a specific digital platform. Combining digital and sonic ethnography and interviews, this article focuses on three aspects of Ling’s platformized acoustic milieu: (1) the embodied voices of the callers, which produce a sense of emotional intimacy for the audience; (2) the audience’s participatory regulation of the rural women’s voices; and (3) the host’s mediation as both supportive and authoritative. The study contributes to the growing body of digital livestreaming research, countering the way it often ignores voice and sound as elements that can create new forms of sociality and action, while also serving as markers of identities or control.