Sustaining later-life visibility: elderly internet celebrity accounts on Douyin in China

The growing number of elderly internet celebrity accounts on Douyin demonstrates older adults' capacity to participate in short-video content creation. Their digital participation involves not only technological adaptation but also the long-term organization of content production, audience relationships, identity stability, and selective commercial cooperation. Drawing on Domestication Theory, the study adopts a qualitative research design to examine how elderly internet celebrity accounts develop sustainable visibility. Based on semi-structured interviews with 12 active elderly internet celebrities on Douyin and online ethnographic observation of their public accounts, the study analyses how elderly creators gradually integrate platform technologies into everyday life, content production, fan interaction, identity construction, and selective commercial practice. The findings reveal that sustainable visibility is supported by continuous technological learning, authentic content production, stable fan interaction, active ageing identity construction, and selective commercial cooperation. At the same time, the process is shaped by labor burden, audience expectations, privacy exposure, commercial risk, and algorithmic uncertainty. The study enriches digital ageing research by shifting attention from older adults as digitally excluded users to elderly internet celebrities as active platform creators. It also extends Domestication Theory to algorithmic short-video platforms and provides practical implications for building more age-sensitive and inclusive digital environments.

Text 127710.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (278kB) Official URL or Download Paper: https://redfame.com/journal/index.php/smc/article/...

Actions (login required)

View Item