Emotional resonance and cultural reproduction in digital landscapes: Cross-media practice and social implications of CP culture

This article examines CP (Couple Pairing) culture – the fan practice of imagining romantic relationships between fictional characters or celebrities – on Chinese digital platforms, combining media sociology, platform studies, and cultural economy. Rather than treating Chinese CP culture as sui generis, the analysis first situates it within a longer transnational genealogy that includes slash fiction, Japanese yaoi, Western real-person shipping, and queerbaiting, before specifying what is distinctively Chinese about its present sociotechnical organization. Drawing on eighteen months of digital ethnography across four platforms (Weibo, Bilibili, LOFTER, and Douban), interviews with forty-five stakeholders, and comparative analysis of five media properties, the study develops the concept of “emotional capitalism infrastructure”: the algorithmic, interface, and narrative mechanisms through which platforms convert affective fan labor into economic value while still affording participants genuine emotional and social benefits. Findings show that platform affordances shape which emotional practices become visible, shareable, and commercially actionable, and that these practices mutate as they migrate across platforms rather than remaining platform-bound. Gender emerges as constitutive, rather than incidental, to CP culture’s affective logic, and China’s regulatory environment is treated as one variable among several – alongside industry structure and platform design – shaping this transnational cultural form. The article closes with governance implications that weigh consumer protection against the cultural and psychological benefits CP participation provides.