ABSTRACT
Heated discussions about same-sex marriage erupted across Chinese social media in December 2019, after a government spokesperson made a rare public comment to address the issue. This study traces the media discourse of queer activism and its opponents during this controversy by sampling and analyzing relevant news reports, Weibo and WeChat posts, comments, and articles and shows how in this case, social media presented a digital space for queer counterpublics to negotiate their positionality in the broader public sphere. While advocating for LGBTQ rights, queer counterpublics had to navigate interactions with other actors occupying the digital space including institutional powers and competing counterpublic forces.
