Chinese Online Celebrities’ Discursive Strategies of Promoting Domestic Products: Online Posters as Multimodal Ensembles

Abstract

Although Chinese online celebrities have received much scholarly attention, scant studies pay attention to the crucial role they play in promoting the emerging “buy national” in China. This study investigates the multimodal discourse conveyed in a collection of advertising posters designed by online celebrities to promote Chinese domestic products (known as guohuo in China). Through a social semiotic lens, it provides a multimodal analysis of how online posters employ visual imaginary and textual messages for commercial purposes within the rising consumer nationalistic context. Drawing upon a dataset of 20 online posters, the analysis reveals a set of semiotic resources including color, image, typography, layout and non-linguistic gesture and gaze. These modes are employed collectively to orchestrate the national script and produce the authoritative representatives that convert the online posters into a kind of national multimodal ensemble. The study highlights the extensive spread of online posters and provides new insights for analyzing the visibility of online celebrities in the growing wave of “buy national” in China.