Resignifying the witch: moral policing and vernacular resistance in misogynistic advertising controversies

Recent feminist scholarship reconceptualizes witch-hunting not as a historical relic but as an enduring sociological mechanism for disciplining women through collective moral policing. Applying this lens to Chinese misogynistic advertising controversies, this study integrates Moral Foundations Theory to examine how moral binaries, distinguishing the virtuous woman from the deviant, structured digital conflict. Text mining reveals four key themes that manifest this dynamic. Specifically, brand insults and gender stereotypes perpetuate the traditional patriarchal regulation of the female body, whereas celebrity controversies manifest as the suppression of the female voice. Conversely, humorous satire emerges as vernacular witchcraft. Here, users deploy strategies of symbolic inversion and performative cursing to cast discursive counter-spells that subvert patriarchal power. Further analysis indicates that while negative moral language dominates the discussion, reflecting the punitive nature of the hunt, positive moral frames associated with these vernacular strategies generate significantly higher user engagement. Overall, this study underscores the negotiation of gendered morality, highlighting how patriarchal consumerism reproduces the disciplinary logic of the witch-hunt, yet women distinctly open up spaces for resignifying the witch through discursive resistance.