Public defence in New Media, MA Ningfeng Zhang

Title of the thesis: Political Internet Memes in Contemporary China: The rhetorical, mnemonic, and phenomenological justifications of their expression and reception as a multimodal mediated action

Thesis defender: Ningfeng Zhang
Opponent: Dr. Ruichen Zhang, Renmin University, China; University of Cambridge
Custos: Prof. Lily Diaz-Kommonen,Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture

This thesis analyzes a large corpus of Chinese political internet memes that were created, used, and circulated in connection with major social and political events in China between 2019 and 2022, as well as within the author’s own individual existential crisis, from both macro-level social group perspectives and micro-level individual perspectives. It seeks to explore how political internet memes, situated in a sociopolitical environment distinct from Western representative democracies, employ visual rhetoric to convey meaning, how they reshape Chinese netizens’ collective memory through patterns and dynamics of group dissemination, and how they are produced, circulated, and utilized in individuals’ everyday online communicative practices.

The conclusions of this study depart from conventional assumptions commonly held by Western scholars regarding online political discourse in China’s media environment, namely: (1) the presumption of an inherent and overly simplified antagonistic relationship between Chinese netizens and the government; and (2) the belief that Chinese political internet memes are necessarily deployed by users as “discursive weapons” to challenge state authority. The findings suggest that although the political elements embedded in Chinese internet memes continue to face a certain degree of censorship risk, their functions have extended beyond a purely weaponized framework of confrontation with an authoritarian state. Instead, they have increasingly taken the form of a relatively neutral mode of social action taking various forms characterized by consumerist and entertainment-oriented features.

The findings of this study may serve as a useful reference for a broad range of media scholars, offering alternative interpretive perspectives for the analysis of contemporary Chinese internet digital culture and its cultural products.

Thesis available for public display 7 days prior to the defence at Aalto University's public display page.