Foreign Movies and TV Dramas as the Source of Political Argot in an Authoritarian Context: Memes and Creative Resistance in Chinese Social Media

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the Web 2.0 era, memes have emerged as playful and versatile forms of communication in the daily interactions of social media users. In countries that embrace digital authoritarianism, memes have been deployed as a vehicle of political communication under the online surveillance system. Based on long-term observation of Chinese cyberspace, the author adopts a deep China approach and conducts multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of a series of political memes which poach transnational TV series and movie scenarios or characters. The remix of symbols from foreign TV dramas and movies with indigenous Chinese symbols devotes to three fundamental dimensions of meaning-making strategies: direct captures, reproduction of the original scene, and the reworking of specific elements. By producing, deploying, and proliferating ironic political memes, Chinese netizens have the capacity to engage in innovative discursive guerrilla wars under the rapidly evolving landscape of surveillance.