Dissertation
“Seven Mouths Eight Tongues”: Interpretive Community and Ritual Practice in the Online Video Website Bilibili
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2020
DOI: 10.17077/etd.005445
Abstract
Increasing interactivity during video viewing is quickly gaining industrial and scholarly attention in the age of social media, as it is seen as a way to hold audience attention while gaining more active discussions. In East Asia, a new form of interactive video streaming website, the bullet curtain or danmaku, is slowly becoming the dominant form of video watching. This type of website incorporates audience comments into the video as it plays, thus the comments are presented as a part of the video. This study focuses on the largest bullet curtain website in China, bilibili.com, from the perspective of an interpretive community in order to understand the website’s appeal to audiences. Online ethnography and interviews are used to examine the community from within to dissect its particular culture.
As an interpretive community, bilibili firmly builds on its branding as a part of the Anime, Comic, and Gaming (ACG) community to create a platform that primarily caters to the ACG audience base. The ACG audience thrives on remix culture and playing with intertextual references, most of which are foreign media content, and bilibili provides a platform for such a culture to flourish. For this community, the bullet curtain system is an important service that helps audiences make spontaneous connections between different texts and create their own community rituals and practices through interactions.
At the same time, a series of socio-political pressures, industrial changes, community practices and audience expectations all become factors that influence bilibili’s existing community and culture. As bilibili moves towards a more commercialized business model, its evolution poses many uncertain questions about the future of the Chinese ACG community.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- “Seven Mouths Eight Tongues”: Interpretive Community and Ritual Practice in the Online Video Website Bilibili
- Creators
- Xianwei Wu
- Contributors
- Brian Ekdale (Advisor)Dan Berkowitz (Committee Member)Shuang Chen (Committee Member)Tim Havens (Committee Member)Judy Polumbaum (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Mass Communication
- Date degree season
- Spring 2020
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.005445
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- vi, 158 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2020 Xianwei Wu
- Language
- English
- Description illustrations
- color illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 146-158).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
This study looks at a special type of video website called the bullet curtain website, which overlays user comments on top of the video as it plays. This way, users can interact with each other and with the video at the same time. The bullet curtain website started in Japan in 2006, but China current hosts the largest bullet curtain website: bilibili.com. This study examines how various factors that influence the way users watch videos on bilibili.com, and how it differs from the western style of tweeting while watching TV. These factors include: political and industrial influences, website’s branding and regulatory efforts, sub-community values, and individual practices.
Bilibili has a well-established brand as a community for anime, comics and gaming (ACG) audiences. ACG audiences love to remix existing popular culture artifacts such as TV series and films into their own fan videos, and create new meanings through remixing and editing. The bullet curtain system compliments this remix culture by creating an environment where audiences can connect with people who have the same interests anonymously.
However, as a popular video website in China, bilibili has to face constant pressure of censorship from the government, especially because the bullet curtain comments are very difficult to control and censor. The tension between bilibili’s active audience community and the socio-political reality in China can have a great deal of influence on the way people watch videos on bilibili.
- Academic Unit
- School of Journalism and Mass Communication
- Record Identifier
- 9983956192802771
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