https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9414-6240
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ABSTRACT
Responding to recent calls in sociolinguistics and social semiotics to study the material, technological and embodied features of writing, this article examines Chinese users’ experiences and practices with the emergent technology of bullet comments on Bilibili, a major video-sharing platform and breeding ground for online subcultures. As one of the first studies based on in-depth interviews with its long term users, this article demonstrates that the unique design of bullet comments, by inserting writing into a moving screen, creates multimedia, multimodal semiotic affordances, reinforces “participatory spectacles,” and facilitates powerful multisensory, bonding experiences similar to the (secondary) orality culture. Users’ diverse range of adaptive and creative practices, which resemiotize available linguistic, visual and cultural resources to create new meaning-making possibilities, are analysed. Considering the recent “desubculturization” of Bilibili and its increased interactions with mainstream culture and the state media, this timely study is well positioned to capture users’ observations about this transition, and assess potential impacts on their experiences and writing practices. It is pointed out that the new synergy of youth nationalism and the technology of bullet comments reflects the complex interplay between writing as a technologized social-semiotic practice, and the wider social, cultural and political conditions.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the 43 interview respondents who generously shared their experiences and insights, without whom this article would not have been possible. Adam Jaworski and Richard Fitzgerald have made critical and insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers whose comments have heped me to improve the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Previous publications sometimes use the Japanese term “Danmaku”. Refer to the following link for an example of bullet comments: https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ss41227?from_spmid=666.32.hotlist.0.
2 According to the latest financial reports released by the company, in the first quarter of 2022, Bilibili has 0.29 billion average monthly active users and has generated a total net revenue of US$797.3 million. Accessed from https://ir.bilibili.com/financial-information/quarterly-results/, 12 June, 2022.
3 It should be mentioned that the website and its function of bullet comments have also undergone many changes in the past decade with a view to enhancing users’ experiences.
4 This study has already been approved by relevant research ethics committee.
5 The main reasons why written interviews through email were adopted are three-fold: (1) They provide access to geographically distant participants and those who may not be available otherwise. (2) Participants are given ample time to complete the interview at their own pace, which allows for more detailed content. (3) Participants can conveniently insert links, screenshots, and examples to illustrate their answers.
6 According to the latest statistics, the age group of 18–24 is the second largest user group of Bilibili, accessed from https://www.similarweb.com/zh/website/bilibili.com/#demographics, 14 June, 2022. See also https://www.jiemian.com/article/6187477.html.
7 The users all adopt an alias on Bilibili and they tend to ignore messages from strangers due to privacy and safety concerns.
8 The list of questions is attached in the Appendix.
9 After submitting a qualified report within one month, they would receive a small payment. As many of them expressed to me, the interview was the first time that they were called upon to reflect on the use of bullet comments and they were eager to share their observations and reflections.
10 I would like to thank Yan Zihe from the University of Chicago and Yang Liu from Lingnan University for their excellent work throughout the project.
11 Due to limited space, I only select typical and notable quotations from the interviewees for analysis.
12 The temporal dimensions of bullet comments are essential to the meaning-making process of the comments, considering that many comments are “pinned” to a specific time during viewing and they only make sense if one takes its timing into account. See Zhou and Zhou (Citation2022) for more discussion on temporality in bullet comments.
13 Though in the interview question, I cited some comments about the “tactile” experiences of writing bullet comments, very few interviewees reported having such experiences. It seems that the other dimensions of multisensory experiences and the distinct temporality afforded by bullet comments made much stronger impressions on them.
14 Advanced comments are those with special effects other than the default style of white-colour comments that roll from right to left. A Level 2 or higher level membership account is required to publish advanced comments.
15 See this video for more details: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Aq4y1D7Fjli.
16 My use of “resemiotization” mainly draws on Iedema (Citation2003) and Scollon and Scollon (Citation2004). It seeks to trace “socio-semiotic histories and transitions” (Iedema Citation2003, 48) through the examination of meaning”s “making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next” (41).
18 Classical Chinese, with a marked absence of inflectional morphology and heavy use of parataxis, presents unparalleled advantages for use in bullet comments, which tend to favour short, idiomatic, and catchy expressions due to time and space constraints. This is echoed in the interview reports.
19 Due to the temporal features of bullet comments, Bilibili adopts a three-phase censoring mechanism: (1) Directly blocking those comments with a pre-set filtering system based on sensitive key words; (2) Removing those already published comments via a combination of algorithms and content censoring teams; (3) Relying on users’ reporting of certain comments, which would then be sent to the content censoring teams to be processed. In addition, as mentioned earlier, users can devise personalized censoring terms to prevent undesirable comments from showing on their screens. For more details, refer to https://www.pmcaff.com/discuss/1000000000142066.
20 On the other hand, in recent years Bilibili has also gained increased “mentions” by state media outlets such as People’s Daily, CCTV, etc.
21 These two are the kinds of formulaic bullet comments highly visible on such celebratory and commemorative videos.
Additional information
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Notes on contributors
Feifei Zhou
Feifei Zhou is an Assistant Professor working in the Department of English at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Her research interests include theories of language and communication, writing practices, digital discourse, and linguistic landscapes. Dr Zhou’s research monograph Models of the Human in Twentieth-century Linguistics: System, Order, Creativity was published by Springer in 2020.