Social Media Influence on Cosplay Communities: A Qualitative Inquiry

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-609-3_54How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cosplay; Social Media; Platform Capitalism; Alienation

Abstract

The costume play (cosplay) subculture is now deeply embedded in the social media environment, and this change has profoundly reshaped the way culture is created. Although the existing literature has pointed out the gatekeeping and cyberbullying in the online cosplay community, the structural conditions behind these phenomena are often ignored. Therefore, this study uses a qualitative method to conduct semi-structured interviews with 20 cosplay participants, aiming to explore how digital platforms affect their behavior, psychological state, and cognition. The results of the study reveal some key insights. Social media limits participants’ self-expression to some extent. Participants are forced to be embedded in the platform’s valuation system. Community conflicts still exist through horizontal exclusion and vertical hierarchy. More importantly, platform capital creates an alienation among individuals, which is a part of the widespread alienation in contemporary society through technology. In addition, a close relationship has been established between the alienation by platform capital and the alienation by social structure. In general, based on the understanding of how digital platforms affect the cosplay subculture, this article helps people understand their situations under platform capitalism and promotes the knowledge and discussion of new types of social alienation in the digital age.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Junyu Hou
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/04
TI  - Social Media Influence on Cosplay Communities: A Qualitative Inquiry
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 3rd International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication (PRMC 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 506
EP  - 515
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-609-3_54
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-609-3_54
ID  - Hou2026
ER  -