This thesis examines the phenomenon of queer community subtitling, the subtitling of queer audiovisual content for and by queer communities. It focuses on one Chinese queer subtitling community which is hereinafter referred to by the pseudonym SubTong. The thesis specifically explores what motivates the SubTong subtitlers’ participation in SubTong and explains their participation through psychological theories of motivation. The exploration was undertaken through a netnographic approach featuring reflexive, immersive and longitudinal fieldwork in the SubTong subtitlers’ authentic settings. Specifically, data was collected through netnographic observation based on digital archiving, an online survey, and online interviews. The archival data and survey responses illuminated the structures and compositions of the SubTong community and uncovered a wide range of possible explanations for the SubTong subtitlers’ participation in SubTong. Based on thematic analysis, the more detailed data elicited via the interviews explained the subtitlers’ different kinds of participation on different levels. Reflexive journaling was also used to record and share with the readers the effect of the researcher and the research methods used on the whole research process and findings. Following the more descriptive empirical analysis, psychological theories of motivation were used to theoretically account for the explanations identified from the empirical data. Specifically, by combining Peters’ (2015) Four Explanations for Human Deeds and Deci and Ryan’s (1985) Self-Determination Theory, the theoretical framework of the Motivational Phenomenon of Self-Determination was developed and used to explain the empirical findings. Ultimately, it was proposed that the SubTong subtitlers did what they did in SubTong to satisfy their basic psychological needs to be hopeful about being queer, to be sexually equal, and to be their queer selves, which eventually was to maintain their healthy psychological growth. Keywords: queer community subtitling, motivation, netnography, audiovisual translation, psychological health, queer identity, self-determination theory