#PositiveEnergyDouyin: constructing “playful patriotism” in a Chinese short-video application

Abstract

In Chinese political discourse, "positive energy" (zheng nengliang) is a popular expression that has embodied mainstream political ideology in China since 2012. This term has also become prominent on Douyin, a prominent Chinese short-video platform. By June 2018, over 500 Chinese governmental accounts on Douyin had promoted positive energy in videos, and the content was viewed over 1.6 billion times. Douyin even created a separate trending section, Positive Energy, for videos that promoted the dominant state ideology. This study argues that the Positive Energy feature on Douyin is significant. The Chinese government has accused and even permanently shut down several digital platforms for spreading "vulgarity" as the antithesis of positive energy. Using the app walkthrough method and a content analysis of over 800 videos collected from the Positive Energy section of Douyin, this study explores how Douyin promotes the Chinese state's political agenda by promoting a new form of playful patriotism online.

Showing They Care (Or Don’t): Affective Publics and Ambivalent Climate Activism on TikTok

“…We found, for instance, that TikTok creators often combined sincere appeals with humorous text or visuals. Such playful sincerity has the practical effect of improving the “palatability, appeal, and dissemination” (Chen et al, 2021, p. 2) of a topic such as climate change, around which discourse is often politically and ideologically charged. Looking at a single isolated TikTok, it is impossible to identify whether it became popular because of the sincere appeal of its message or simply because people found it funny.…”

The co-evolution of two Chinese mobile short video apps: Parallel platformization of Douyin and TikTok

“…Douyin clearly bears more marks of Chinese internet regulation than TikTok. As noted above, ByteDance has taken steps to appease the Chinese government, such as including a positive energy section following a domestic controversy (Chen, Kaye, & Zeng, 2020). While officially TikTok does not include infrastructures or policies that can be directly related to the internet governance in mainland China, the platform has been the subject of intense scrutiny in different national contexts, in part due to its Chinese roots.…”

The geopolitics of ‘platforms’: the TikTok challenge

“…While the Chinese government has been known to influence the content available on Douyin, the evidence of similar influence on TikTok is limited. For example, a 2020 comparative study of the two Bytedance short form video apps found the Chinese government used Douyin to promote Chinese patriotism but there was no corresponding evidence on TikTok (Chen et al, 2020). When Bytedance first began releasing TikTok into markets outside of China in 2017, the platform's content moderation guidelines were aimed at limiting the circulation of all highly controversial materials on the platform.…”