Full Description
This book examines antagonistic fan communication on Chinese social media, focusing on the sociolinguistic dimensions and digital strategies in fandom discourse of Chinese celebrities to engage in broader questions around language, social media, and fan culture.
The volume explores the different factors which contribute to antagonism in these contexts, including competitive fan posting meant to boost celebrities' positive publicity, but also at fans' communicative practices themselves. Adopting an action-centered sociolinguistic framework, Hou considers how antagonistic fan communication transforms as fans' engagement with digital technologies transforms and their experience with mediated content deepens. The book takes an in-depth look into how fans use a mix of verbal aggressions, such as trolling, with savvy digital tools, such as identity masking and memes to avoid content removal, in order to mobilize, collaborate, and communicate on a wider scale and, often times, funnel those energies into digital activism events. Hou shows how the study of such discourses can not only reveal fresh insights into the state of fandom culture and political communication online but also directions for future research on language and social media.
This book will be of interest to scholars in digital communication, sociolinguistics, digital media studies, discourse analysis, and celebrity studies.
Contents
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgment
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Celebrity Fandom in China
The industrial and technological contexts of celebrity fandom culture in China
The features of celebrity fandom practices in China
The government's regulation of digital platforms and fandom activities
Fan antagonism and anti-fandom
Cancel culture and celebrity bashing
Flaming and trolling
Fan activism and Chinese fandom nationalism
Social media logics
Chapter conclusion
Chapter 3 Action-centered sociolinguistic analysis: Fan practices as digitally afforded social action
Chapter 4 Researching celebrity fandom through digital ethnography
Chapter 5 Algorithm-oriented and competitive fan practices
Data contribution
Comment control
The competitive ethos in celebrity fandom culture
Chapter 6 Sociolinguistic features and social media strategies of antagonistic fan communication
The interaction order of fan antagonism
Unaddressed interaction between fandoms
Addressed interaction between fandoms
Naming the celebrity
"Slaughtering the square"
Creating and posting with derogatory hashtags
Addressing to entertainment industry stakeholders
Flagging abuse to Weibo platform
The amplified antagonism in entertainment news on Weibo
Moves, evolution and information visibility in fan antagonism
Multimodal strategies and themes in fan antagonism
Accusing online fan behaviors
Verbal attacks on celebrities
Who are the anti-fans?
Chapter conclusion
Chapter 7 Recontextualizing fan antagonism in political communication
Who is the opponent of "Brother China"
Pick your idol in "Construction 101"
The flopped virtual idols of the Communist Youth League
Disrupting the conflict structure in fan communication
Chapter 8 Fan antagonism and discursive conflicts in digital space
Researching antagonism in the celebrity fandom culture in China
The competitive digital fan practices as a polycentric construct and a discourse of exclusivity
The antagonistic fan communication as a genre
When can fans battle?
Discursive conflicts in a digital environment 92
Bibliography
Index
