Wanghong as a field of research: a scholarly advocacy

In this article, we argue that wanghong deserves to be treated as a field of inquiry with conceptual independence, while advocating for greater conceptual and vocabular diversity within the emerging field of creator and influencer studies. We further propose that wanghong offer a productive analytical lens, and that they should not be understood solely as platform-bound actors. Instead, they must be situated within wider social, cultural, and political contexts to examine their “relationality”, “articulations”, and “entanglements” with other social domains, as well as the consequences of these connections. Finally, we suggest a potential future direction: conceptualising wanghong as method under specific conditions.