Rethinking Openness: Public Visibility and Restricted Participation in Women-Only Online Communities

Abstract

While openness is often treated as a single construct in research on online communities and feminist scholarship, we argue that this framing collapses two distinct dimensions: visibility, or whether the public can observe a community's content, and open participation, or who is permitted to participate and contribute. Drawing on interviews with moderators in women-only online communities on Douban, this paper examines how community leaders shape participation structures to effectively manage highly visible spaces. We show how these groups sustain a high level of visibility to amplify women's voices and feminist ideas, and restrict participation to maintain solidarity and safety. The analysis demonstrates that openness is an ongoing process in which communities continually weigh benefits against the risks of being open and adjust their openness in response to changing external risks and internal dynamics. Reconceptualizing openness as multidimensional provides a clearer framework for understanding how marginalized communities navigate competing needs in shifting environments.