Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture

Dorothy Wai Sim Lau is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include stardom, celebrities, fandom, Asian cinema, Hong Kong cinema, digital culture and screen culture. She is the author of Chinese Stardom in Participatory Cyberculture (2019), Reorienting Chinese Stars in Global Polyphonic Networks: Voice, Ethnicity, Power (2021), Celebrity Activism and Philanthropy in Asia: Toward a Cosmopolitical Imaginary (2024), and East Asian Auteurs, Cinephilia and the Media Platform Era (2025). Lau was the visiting scholar at the School of East Asian Studies, The University of Sheffield in 2022.

Lau’s book valuably contributes to a growing body of literature nudging film theory beyond the filmic. This, then, is film theory for the twenty-first century: it acknowledges (and hypothesizes about) the impact of Web culture on all aspects of cinema, from the manufacture of star personae to new viral forms of film distribution and promotion.

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresNote on the TextIntroduction: A Phenomenon After Cinema – The Chinese Stardom Goes ‘Cyber’Chapter 1 - Blogging Donnie Yen: Remaking the Martial Arts Body as a Cyber-IntertextChapter 2 - ‘Flickering’ Jackie Chan: The Actor-Ambassadorial Persona on Photo-sharing SitesChapter 3 - ‘Friending’ Jet Li on Facebook: The Celebrity-Philanthropist Persona in Online Social NetworksChapter 4 - YouTubing Zhang Ziyi: Chinese Female Stardom in Fan Videos on Video-sharing SitesChapter 5 - Discussing Takeshi Kaneshiro: The Pan-Asian Star Image on Fan ForumsConclusion - Reimagining Chineseness in the Global Cyber CultureFilmographyBibliographyIndex