Визуальный Интернет-юмор, как фактор
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Environmental Problems This category is represented by 8 images from the sample. The most representative images are analyzes further in the text.
In Fig. 4 a man looking down on the water surface sees a pig looking at him from underwater. The context in which this image should be interpreted refers to the incident of March 2013, when thousands of dead pigs were found in the river Huangpu, one of the main water supply of Zhejiang province [38]. The issue brought up several questions at once: where those pigs were from, why they died, how it would affect the quality of water in the province, etc. The investigation showed that the pigs were the result of the introduction of the new food safety regulations and the start of the campaign against anti-sanitary conditions of food production. The pigs were from illegal butchers’ shops, those who bought the corpses of infected animals and resold the meat as usual pork. The man in the picture is looking at the water surface with most probably one reason – to see his own reflection, however, he sees a pig. What is more important, this particular picture shows us the pig and the human in completely similar poses, with their eyes staring in the same direction but mirrored. And thus, the pigs are represented as the reflection of the Chinese people themselves, implying that the people get exactly what can be expected from the way they treat the environment. Fig. 5 and 6 are quite similar in their idea, however, they were made by different authors. The source of the picture at chinadigitaltimes.net says that the Fig. 5 was actually censored some time after its publication; however, there is no evidence that Fig. 6 was censored, too. Both pictures are user-edited photographs that show the most famous portrait of Mao Zedong which hangs on the Tiananmen Gate in Beijing. There are three changes made by the user in the case of Fig. 5: the author added a mask, made Mao’s eyes closed and drew the hair being blown by the wind; in addition, the image has a yellowish hue. The mask has become a compulsory accessory of every resident of Beijing, the city notorious for its air pollution problems. Mao Zedong, as a Beijinger, also put on his mask. The expression (eyes closed tightly) tells us two things: that the smog hurts the eyes, and that Mao is obviously not happy with this type of weather, which is, after all, the result of the development of China. The wind in the hair of the Chairman is a detail that shows how this kind of weather conditions affects even the perfect people. As for Fig. 6, the only two things that are changed are the lack of yellowish hue and the absence of the mask. Although the facial expression of the Chairman remained the same, now it shows more satisfaction and relief, rather than discontent. The wind now is perceived as a light breeze which at last brings freshness to the city. Overall, these two pictures on the one hand, highlight the scales of the existing ecological problem in Beijing, on the other hand, shows the equality of people of every status when facing the ecological problem, and in addition to that, to some point criticizes the society for being so irresponsible in its ways of development, that, as the author guesses, even Mao whose aim was the development of China, would not approve of this. The images of this group do not have many symbolic elements, rather they unexpectedly combine things that are not alike but start having something in common under the conditions of polluted environment.
This category is as big as the category related to officials, the number of the uncensored images characterized as fit for this group among uncensored images is 11, among censored is 5. The analysis of Fig. 7-10 as the most representative images of this category is given below.
Figure 7 portrays the system of censorship. The space of the picture is divided into two parts: the one that is in front of the screen of the laptop, and the one that is behind. The man in front of the screen is an angry user (we can see it by the clouds around) writing something considerably long about the issue of his discontent. On the other side of the screen is the space of Internet censors, who are portrayed as red guards (with their red bands on the sleeves and distinctive caps) holding nets ready to catch an and not less than Mao Zedong himself (the distinctive feature is the haircut). The ‘red guards’ and their ‘head’ are portrayed not exactly like human beings, but more like ghosts; this stresses their intangibility: the censors do exist, but nobody knows who they are and where they are. While one of the ‘red guards’ is consulting his ‘boss’ with a guilty expression and pointing at a particular phrase, another one is reading the quickly growing text. The comparison of the censors and the red guards is quite significant. The movement of red guards was supposed to ‘make China red from inside out’ [15].The whole Party is personified in the ghost of Mao, who, like the current Party looking for a danger to themselves in the comments, saw the danger to the then existing political regime in the works of scholars. Fig. 8 is a visualization of the doctrine of ‘China Dream’ (中国梦) which was introduced in 2013 by Xi Jinping and became a new ideological course for the period of Xi Jinping’s rule. For each of the people laying in bed at the moment the ‘dream’ is different: for some it is sweeping the streets, for others – a happy pension days of their parents, for some of them even reading aloud the poems of Mao Zedong for an audience is a dream. However, the person in the center has an inscription ‘The dream was deleted by the Dream owner’ instead of the dream. The phrase is a usual message for those of the Weibo users whose posts were deleted due to censorship violation reasons. The image appearing instead of the dream shows the viewer that the Chinese can only dream as long as their dreams do not violate the existing limits of freedom, and thus, a dream about the freedom of speech and self-expression cannot be considered to be the Chinese dream. Fig. 9 is an example of the most minimal editing of the users, however, the only detail can completely change the whole message of the image. The image represented in Fig. 9 is based on a screenshot of the CCTV news program, where the interviewee, Pan Shiyi (潘石屹), the Chairman of SOHO China, is talking about the possible dangers of giving more power on the Internet to the famous VIP-type users [46]. His words were as follows5: ‘Those users who have more followers, have to be stricter to what they post. If you feel free to post anything, the social impact of this can be very strong.’ According to some sources, Pan Shiyi had previously published in his Weibo a post with the following text: ‘Everyone is passionately discussing whether the Internet should be controlled, cleaned up, guided, to indoctrinate the public…I personally believe that everyone should participate in society online, and the public shouldn’t be passively indoctrinated. Rumors should be sanctioned under the law. Forcing the Big V’s and Internet celebrities to indoctrinate the public and raise the public’s level of morality will not fly6.’ The behavior of the Internet activist on the screen and his Weibo post are quite opposite, which indicated the obvious influence of the authorities and media on what Pan said in the interview. This detail was caught by one of the Weibo users, who added only one detail to the screenshot – handcuffs on Pan’s wrists by chance lying on his knees as if he was really in handcuffs. The picture shows the audience that only under pressure could this person say what he said on the TV, as usually he had had quite liberal understanding of the role of Internet even in China. 
Fig. 10. Example of Censorship category (deleted image) Fig. 10 is an example of a censored picture. The inscription says ‘Kaspersky from the bottom to the top’, and the image portrays a man with his genitals and lips tied up together, while his arms are tied behind his back. It is a torture, because every smallest movement can cause an excruciating pain for him in any of the tied-up parts of the body. This is a portrayal of the main principles of censorship: taking its roots in the ban on pornography, it also covers some politically sensitive topics, which keeps citizens from free self-expression. As a result of the analysis, it can be stated that the attention in the images focused on the problems of censorship and freedom of speech is drawn to the third-party played by the censors in the private conversations, which is portrayed applying any kind of pressure: physical or mental, on the people trying to speak or even think differently. No visual representations of puns or wordplays have been spotted in this group; however, the integration of the features of the Internet (such as emblems of chat, network, ‘firewall’ or blocks) into the imaginative reality of an image is a common method of highlighting particular details. As for the censored pictures, they mostly focus on the separate parts of the body associated with opinion expressing, and compare the censorship with the torture or execution. Leaders
This category is only represented by two images, one of which was deleted (Fig. 11). Fig. 11 is a photo of Xi Jinping and Barack Obama walking side-by side at Sunnnylands, California, in June 2013. The attention of the creator was at the posetures and the appearance of the leaders: a tall and slim Obama accompanied by a plump and relatively short Xi, both smiling and looking quite at peace. The author made a comparison with Winnie-the-Pooh and his friend Tigger, stressing by this both the relationship between the characters and their personalities, thus extrapolating the distinctive features of the characters on the personalities of the politics. Therefore, for those looking at the picture Xi Jinping would seem soft-hearted, naïve and slow-witted, while Obama would look energetic and always bouncing. The reason for the deletion of the picture from the Chinese websites is obvious: the portrayal of the country’s leader in the shape of a soft-hearted and naïve character shows disrespect to his authority. But in spite of being deleted, the comparison was perceived by the netizens as very successful, and therefore further appeared in the end of December 2013 after Xi Jinping’s lunch in an ordinary Beijing restaurant Qingfeng (Fig. 12). This action was perceived by the media as an attempt to put more attention to the problem of food safety in China, and was also understood as an attempt of the leader to appear closer to ordinary people [47]. Thus, the creators of a logo for the non-existing Qing-Feng Steamed Dumpling Shop again brought up the image of a soft-hearted Xi Jinping as Winnie-the-Pooh, underlining this time not only previously applied feature of his character, but also Winnie’s love to eating. This picture was not deleted due to the fact that the correlation between the bear and Xi did not seem that obvious without the accompanying photo. The second picture-logo is a mocking reflection of how the Chinese leader tries to appear soft and ordinary, which is seen by the Internet community as just an appearance. This is a great example of how visual methods help avoid stricter censorship. 
Fig. 13. Example of Leaders category (deleted image) Fig. 13 is an example of a censored picture featuring leaders. The mage Is a photo of a billboard featuring Russian president Putin and Xi Jinping making offensive gestures and accompanies by the slogans like ‘Goodbye America’. The image implies the Russian-Chinese strengthening of relationship after the worsening of Russia-USA relationship due to Ukrainian evens, and gas contract signing, and indicates that the two countries are strong enough together to not pay attention to the USA any more. The picture presented not a favorable image of the Chinese leader, and this is the most likely reason for its deletion from the Internet. Other images of the censored sampling also feature Putin and Xi, Putin and Obama and imply a very intimate relationship between them, which puts dishonor to the name of the Chinese leader. Society The current category is represented by 17 images, which is the largest category, but it covers many of the topics. The creation of these type of pictures is mostly driven by the latest events, and for the period of our interest one of the incidents discussed a lot was a conflict happened in July 2013 between a watermelon seller in Hunan province and chengguan (城管), an urban management officer, who, according to the witnesses, killed the seller by an iron weight after the chengguan refused to give the seller an invoice for fine payment. While the officials did not give any explanation of the incident [39], the Weibo community reacted very quickly and a lot of pictures appeared in the microblogs, such as Fig. 14. 
Fig. 14. Example of Society category The author puts shame on the changguan offices by depicting an iron weight with the characters 临武 (standing for the name of the county) smashing a watermelon, the juice of which spread all over the country. The watermelon stands for the victim in the incident, and the red watermelon juice is his blood. The crime committed by the chengguan of Linwu has worsened the reputation of the chengguan office all over the country. Table 2 presents the data gathered for a quantitative analysis of the images. It indicates the number and percentage of the images where certain semiotic tools were used for the representation of the main idea. It also shows the most frequently discussed topics in each group.
As it can be seen from the table, the most frequently used semiotic tool is the use of indices, which is presented in 82-83% of cases irrespectively of the censorship check outcome. Icons are equally not popular among editing users, as the percentage of their use is 18 in both groups with slightly higher result in ProPublica sample of images – 22%. As for the symbols, the percentage of their use is the highest among the uncensored images, as they can be spotted in 75% of the analyzed images of this group. This number is the lowest in the sampling taken from WeiboScope, and significantly higher, but still not reaching the level of uncensored images group, in the sample taken from ProPublica project. Social structures are not widely represented in the sample as a tool for meaning expression. It is almost equal – 35% and 30% – for uncensored and deleted images respectively. This insignificant difference cannot be an indicator that the use of structure in the image helps users escape deletion of their posts. A big difference can be seen in the results of punctum analysis of the images of both groups. The frequency of its use is significantly higher among uncensored images than in the deleted ones: 30% versus 7%. It can be suggested that this kind of technique – the use of punctum – distracts the attention of censors from the details and is therefore more effective among for the avoidance of post deletion. The popularity of topics discussed through the creation of images also varies in the groups of uncensored and censored images. Society problems, critique of officials, censorship issues and environmental problems are the most frequently seen in the sample of uncensored images, with Society category in the lead. Deleted images turn to the following problems more: censorship, critique of officials, political system, foreign affairs and leaders. It is noticeable that these numbers differ among the samples taken from WeiboScope and ProPublica, as the former focused more on leaders and foreign affairs, and the latter discussed political system, censorship and officials more. Such a result should not be interpreted as a sign of sources’ subjective sampling based on certain topics of interest. On the contrary, this result is quite predictable, as the samplings were made at different periods of time, and as the images circulating in Weibo are closely connected to the recent events in the country and abroad, this difference can be ignored. The main methods of humorous portrayal of main characters or problems in the analyzed images are replacement of serious things with the less serious analogues (e.g. replacement of a tank referring to the tanks on Tiananmen in 1989 with a knotted toy tank), representation of people in the form of symbolic animals or historical or mythological characters (e.g. a toad or Yue Fei), portrayal of people in the unusual situations (like Wen Jiabao jumping over a tightrope while visiting a school), and implication of intimate relationship between the people. One of the other methods is the visual representation of euphemisms and idiomatic expressions. Manipulations with the composition of characters were also used in the sample as a method of visualizing the authors’ ideas. Thematically the images are related to the current events, and more rarely represent overall critique or ideas not connected to the recent changes and events in the society. Most of the images require considerable background knowledge about the Chinese culture, the history of China, especially the history of the 20th century, the Internet slang and the popular culture such as cartoons or manga. Yüklə 0,57 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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