The Medium is the Message: Exploring the Introduction of Bullet Comment Culture to China and Its Impact on the Identity Expression of Generation Z Individuals

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.123How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Bullet comments; Generation Z; Bilibili; Identity expression

Abstract

Ever since the trend of watching Japanese animation became popular in China, the Japanese online culture phenomenon has changed Chinese social media participation for Generation Z (the generation of people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s) in both contents and forms. This essay mainly focuses on Bullet comments culture, Bullet Comments are commentary subtitles that pop up when watching videos. In order to explore how a niche interaction function originated in Japan and was designed for anime fans, evolved into a phenomenal communication tool adopted by many mainstream Chinese video platforms, this essay tries to answer why bullet comments only survive and thrive in Japan and China by using a medium study perspective. Thus, Erving Goffman’s Frontstage-Backstage Identities theory and Stuart Hall’s Encoding/decoding theory will be used. By interacting with online communities on Bilibili, which is a cultural community and video platform with a high concentration of young generations in China. This paper adopts digital ethnographic methodologies to investigate the Bilibili users’ routines when they send bullet comments. Through the case study and interview with the Bilibili users, this essay tries to explore the connection between Generation Z’s identity expressions and their bullet comments’ posting behaviors.

The conclusion of this essay indicates that entropy of textual information, national character and historical custom have all played a critical part in bullet comment culture’s flourishing development in both China and Japan. The result of the research and interview have also shown that bullet comments provide a haven for Generation Z to explore ways of self-expression. As well as for them to confirm they are true identities and to seek a sense of recognition and belonging.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Maoting Shi
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - The Medium is the Message: Exploring the Introduction of Bullet Comment Culture to China and Its Impact on the Identity Expression of Generation Z Individuals
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 669
EP  - 673
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.123
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.123
ID  - Shi2022
ER  -