Current Project
Project
(2023-Present)
Post-human Digital Intimacy and Wellbeing: Affects, Women and Digital Technologies in East and Southeast Asia
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This funded project explores the affective experiences of women who play women-oriented video games and intensively use emotional AI chatbots or companions in East and Southeast Asia. We examine the multi-facets of such more-than-human and more-than-digital intimacies between women and virtual characters.
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Principle Investigators:
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Dr. Liang Ge (University of Manchester)
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Dr. Tingting Hu (Xi'an Jiaotong - Liverpool University)
Block 1: Women and Women-oriented Video Games
​Research Output
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Ge, L., Hu, T., & Ouyang, M. (2025). Digital literacies of intimacy: women’s engagement and learning in otome video games. Information, Communication & Society, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2587132
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Hu, T., & Ge, L. (2025). Datafication of Digital Intimacy: The Dual Logic of Empowerment and Commodification. Games and Culture, Online First. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120251358522
Block 2: Women and Emotional AI
​Research Output
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Ge, L., & Hu, T. (2025). Gamifying intimacy: AI-driven affective engagement and human-virtual human relationships. Media, Culture & Society, 47(6): 1265-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437251337239
Block 3: Women and Virtual YouTubers
​Research Output
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Hu, T. and Ge, L. (Accept/In press). Affective Liquidity, Synthetic Bonds: VTubers as Posthuman Mediators of Digital Intimacies. New Media and Society.
