Between the marked and the unmarked: twin semiotic paradoxes of the barrage in China’s livestreaming fandom

Abstract

As one of the most popular online media in China, personal livestreaming attracts massive attention and effects on human social communication in multiple novel ways. This article explores the semiotic mechanism of the barrage, a special form of commenting, on China’s livestreaming platforms. Drawing on cultural semiotic theories, it discusses the impact of the barrage by the fandom of China’s livestreaming. Two interrelated semiotic paradoxes are created by two interrelated forms of markedness from the use of the barrage by Chinese livestreaming fans, that is, the markedness of time and the markedness of space. Through careful assessment of the use of the barrage in China’s livestreaming fandom, this article sheds new light on China’s livestreaming and its potential impact on the future of digital China.

Keywords

barrage China Chinese cyber fandom livestreaming markedness semiotic paradoxes

Introduction

In recent years, personal livestreaming has become one of the most influential media in Chinese cyberculture. Not only many netizens but an increasing number of domestic investors are participating in this evolving communication technology. Estimates of the value of China’s livestreaming range from $US5 billion in 2016 to $US4.4 billion in 2017 to $US10 billion in 2018, with predictions for $US19 billion in 2022 (Cunningham et al., 2019: 4). After the global financial crisis in 2008, China’s livestreaming entered a fast-growing era with the widespread use of mobile terminals. The emergence of Chinese livestreaming colossuses, including some of the largest dot-com companies, has also advanced this industry (Zhang and Hjorth, 2017: 3–4).

One feature of China’s livestreaming of particular significance is the presence of copious barrages, especially those involving popular streamers who own millions of fans. The term ‘barrage’ (a.k.a. bullet screen/bullet subtitle) is borrowed from a type of ‘shoot ’em up’ game in which the entire screen is often flooded with enemy bullets. This mechanism requires players to consistently dodge an overwhelming number of enemy projectiles on the screen (Ashcraft and Snow, 2008: 77). Since 2006, danmaku (lit. massed artillery fire, ‘barrage’ in Japanese) has been used to refer to the overlaid, real-time commenting on online video due to its visual similarity with the ‘shoot ’em up’ game in Japanese otaku culture (Zheng, 2016: 323). In an online video, the barrage usually works as follows: posted barrages repeatedly appear and then disappear after a few seconds as they scroll out of the frame of the video window. Alternatively, in the case of static comments that ‘pop’ onto the screen like film subtitles, they vanish after a similar time span (Johnson, 2013: 301–302).

In this article, our primary goal is to provide an in-depth analysis of the barrage as a significant online practice of fandom in China’s livestreaming industry. China’s livestreaming industry has unique characteristics compared to livestreaming platforms in other countries as a result of the barrage. From a broader cultural perspective, the barrage may significantly impact the future of Chinese society. To fulfill our goal and to provide greater insight into contemporary Chinese cyberculture, we chose the semiotic concept of markedness as an appropriate lens with which to assess the barrage in China’s livestreaming.

Understanding the role of barrage in China’s livestreaming

In China, online video sharing websites that feature barrages emerged in 2008, and the first wave of such websites contained a high number of unauthorized videos from Japanese otaku websites (Jiang, 2014: 7–8). After several years of transmission, danmu, the Chinese variation of danmaku, is now a well-established and popular form of online communication for fans in China’s various video sharing websites. The barrage, borrowed directly from Japanese video sharing websites, has now become the most common form of expression by fans on livestreaming platforms.

Figure 1 shows four livestreaming platforms, two of which are from the United States (the left two) and the other two are from China (the right two). The overlaid barrages mark the differences between livestreaming in the West and in China. Livestreaming platforms like Twitch.tv or Facebook Live are designed to be visually independent of the main screen without disrupting the main picture. In Figure 1, all the instant comments during livestreaming in Twitch.tv are separated from the main screen at the right side, and those on Facebook Live are displayed at the bottom. By contrast, audiences that participate in China’s livestreaming platforms see all of the comments on the main screen, which ensures the instantaneity and effectiveness of various communicative forms. The habitual location of on-screen comments is one of the major differences between livestreaming in China and livestreaming in other countries. The interaction between streamer and fans has now become an indispensable part of a wide variety of livestreaming shows, and increasing revenues on various livestreaming platforms in China have also helped make the barrage a remarkable online phenomenon.

Figure 1.

Comparison between Twitch.tv (top-left) and Facebook Live (bottom-left), and Xiongmao (top-right) and Kuaishou (bottom-right).

The first wave of studies on the online barrage originated in Japan (Hamasaki et al., 2008). From then on, scholars in the field of Japanese studies have shown concern about this new media. Daniel Johnson (2013) introduced online barrage to the Western academia from the perspective of linguistic anthropology, using the term ‘counter-transparent communication’ (p. 299) to explain the unique features of barrage in online streaming. He also argued that it is part of a shift between denotational and pictorial forms of text production that clouds the distinction between reading and other modes of vision (pp. 311–312). In her study on fansubbing, Tessa Dwyer (2017b: 170–171) partly raised her attention on on-screen comments in video sharing practices in Japan and China. Later, she conducted a comparative analysis between Hecklevision in the United States, barrage cinema in China, and barrage commenting on online video in China and Japan (Dwyer, 2017a). Since 2013, a growing number of Chinese researchers have been concerned about the ‘barrage’ phenomenon in Chinese cyber media and have made remarkable contributions (Chen et al., 2013; Jiang, 2014). Also, several studies on the online barrage written by Chinese scholars, for example, Xiqing Zheng (2016), Lili Liu et al. (2016), Yeqi Zhu (2017), and Leticia-Tian Zhang and Cassany (2019), are published in English. In general, studies of online barrage have developed from initial evaluation by Chinese academia to studies in the international arena.

As for studies on China’s livestreaming, only two articles in English can be found to date. Ge Zhang and Hjorth (2017) chose two female streamers on a livestreaming platform in China engaging in gender performativity and demonstrating entrepreneurial agency, while subverting traditional performative norms around gender. Similarly, Stuart Cunningham et al. (2019) emphasize that streamers in China’s livestreaming industry are central focal points in the increasing tensions between the cultural politics and economic ambitions of digital China. Both of these studies focus on China’s livestreaming performance from streamers.

However, most existing studies take ‘online barrage’ or ‘China’s livestreaming’ as the objects are independent of each other, except for one study which gives a general introduction to the barrage in China’s livestreaming (Yu and Xu, 2017). Thus the academia has failed to distinguish the principal differences between livestreaming and non-live streaming barrages. We contend that the barrage plays a key role in China’s livestreaming, but has not been convincingly substantiated by the existing literature. To address this discrepancy, we provide a more detailed and insightful observation on the use of the barrage by fans in China’s livestreaming.

For practical illustration, Douyu, one of the most popular of China’s livestreaming platforms and also known as ‘a Chinese version of Twitch.tv’ (Zhang and Hjorth, 2017: 2), serves as the main object of our observation to exemplify practices of the barrage in livestreaming, because it provides a relatively full-fledged mechanism of barrage commenting. Other major livestreaming platforms, such as Huya and Inke, are briefly examined as support for our main argument. Three recently published market analyses of China’s livestreaming from two Chinese third-party organizations (iResearch and iiMedia) are cited as key sources of data gathering and its utilization. We believe these two well-known institutions in Chinese entertainment are capable of providing reliable scientific evidence about the livestreaming industry. Some examples based on Chinese cyberculture (e.g. liang, shuaping) are potentially substitutable; however, it is difficult to trace their origin. Therefore, they are discussed primarily to reinforce our arguments.

Theoretically, the semiotic term ‘markedness’ is introduced as the main approach of our study. Initiated by the Prague School, markedness, as a linguistic term, refers to the binary characterization of a regular linguistic unit against one or more of its possible oppositions. In 1930, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, in a letter to Roman Jakobson, first suggested applying the terms ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ in an attempt to identify correlations among phonemes (Battistella, 1996: 19). Jakobson replied that marked/unmarked correlations have ‘significance not only for linguistics but also for ethnology and the history of culture’ (Battistella, 1996: 20).¹ Jakobson’s followers were convinced by his assertion and adopted the terms to refer to unequal binary oppositions in cultural fields such as female/male, Black/White, homosexual/heterosexual, left/right, nude/clothed, and written language/spoken language (Waugh, 1982: 309). Meanwhile, the term ‘markedness reversal’ has also been adapted to denote the instability and context-sensitivity of cultural markedness. In other words, the marked and the unmarked in a specific era or culture can be transposed in the history of civilization or in the context of different occupations (Waugh, 310). In his work on cultural semiotics, Yiheng Zhao (2011: 289–290) exemplifies markedness reversal with sexuality: promiscuity was unmarked in most primitive cultures, while regular sexual relationship was casual and therefore marked. With the progress of civilization, marital sexuality had gradually become unmarked and any sexuality outside marriage was morally and legally marked. But in the cultural transformation in contemporary society, premarital and extramarital sex are sometimes reversed as the unmarked by the mainstream culture.

Zhao also develops the term ‘middle sign’ to explain the operative mode of the inequality and reversal between the marked and unmarked. He notes (Zhao, 2011: 285) that the middle sign cannot identify itself without the presence of the unmarked, and the markedness reversal must be considered in a dynamic process. The middle sign swings between the marked and the unmarked, depending on cultural inclinations. Once the unmarked is recognized and followed by the middle sign, they unite to marginalize the marked (see Figure 2). Zhao crystallizes this process with the history of the concept of ‘culture’ itself (287): ‘The cultural’ (as the unmarked) emerges when culture (as the middle sign) identifies and follows it by social habits and distinguishes itself from ‘the non-cultural’ (as the marked), which is regarded as deviation from the norm. On the other hand, some parts of these non-cultural communities try to integrate into the cultural, while the others identify themselves as ‘subculture’ and attempt to avoid assimilation by the mainstream. Zhao offers a dynamic viewpoint on the binary system of markedness and its reversal between the mainstream culture and the subculture. Fandom from subculture may see itself as a marginalized community and try to draw a line of demarcation between them and the mainstream culture, while it is also treated as the marked by mainstream culture. Also, markedness reversals are recognized when the subcultural fandom is popularized, as the unmarked, in mainstream culture, that is, they potentially become the unmarked as soon as they are mainstreamed, and the original significance of markedness no longer exists.

Figure 2.

The cultural relationship between the unmarked, the middle sign, and the marked (Zhao, 2011: 286).

In China’s livestreaming, there are two different kinds of markedness. The first one, which refers directly to Yiheng Zhao’s argument, is the markedness of livestreaming fandom as a subcultural community. For the markedness of livestreaming fandom, evolving from a webcam subculture among hardcore gamers to a global industry involving millions of fans, livestreaming is undergoing dramatic transformation in China’s entertainment business (Zhang and Hjorth, 2017: 5). Still, millions of livestreaming fans appear to have intentionally estranged themselves from traditional entertainments such as television, and the barrage is chosen as a marked sign to reveal their distinctive personalities. Researchers have noticed that terms like ‘barrage’ tend to aggressively catch the viewer’s attention and commandeer the video feed to challenge traditional modes of audience decorum (Liu et al., 2016: 284). Our focus, however, is another kind of markedness, that is, the markedness of barrage inside the livestreaming fandom and its impact on this industry and contemporary Chinese society.

The paradox of temporal markedness of barrage in China’s livestreaming fandom

Time plays a significant role of markedness for the barrage during a livestreaming show in China. Many barrages flash through the screen, but only a few of them, as the marked, are typically noticed and responded to by the streamer or fans. Those former unmarked barrages are expected to take the opportunity to turn themselves into focal points on the screen, that is, the marked. China’s livestreaming fandom enjoy using fragmented, and fluid Internet catchphrases which are shared by other online media (e.g. Twitter or Weibo, a Chinese twitter-like social media) as barrage comments, and one may fail to understand their implication if one has lost track of modern cyber trivia. However, it is the immediacy of transmission which makes barrage in China’s livestreaming semiotically unique compared to other online media. For example, it always takes at least several seconds to have others digest the information in Weibo, although the transmission itself is instant. In livestreaming, in comparison, barrages roll on the screen synchronously; therefore, fans barely feel the delay of informative reception when they watch a livestreaming show. This immediacy of transmission is why 87.1% of Chinese users participate in this kind of interactive activity when they are watching livestreaming shows (iResearch, 2018a: 15). Barrage commenting has already become an inseparable part of the China’s livestreaming narrative by promoting interaction between the streamer and fans.

The comparison between fans of non-live streaming and livestreaming may help us to further understand the markedness of barrage in China’s livestreaming fandom. Fans in livestreaming spend a significant amount of time watching livestreaming because a streamer broadcasts in a specific block of time (usually at least 1 hour), which compels them to adjust to the streamer’s broadcast schedule. In contrast, the consumption of time for fans who watch non-live streaming is much more flexible since the video is always prerecorded. Therefore, barrages in non-live streaming are only seen in the timeline of playing, and anyone can rewind to see the same barrage as many times as he or she wants as long as the timeline is identical. This is why Johnson (2013: 301) calls barrages ‘pseudo-synchronic media’ – it lends itself to an experience of virtual liveness because fans in non-live streaming who previously sent barrages are not really involved in any interaction unless they relocate the time point to where they make comments. In livestreaming, however, fans do not get to choose the perfect moment for them to see the live show, and all barrages are sent and recognized at the same unrepeatable timeline in reality. Barrage becomes an essential tool for instant interaction in livestreaming as if they are talking in real-time with each other on the screen. Consequently, fans may influence, even decide, the contents and trends with the help of barrage in a livestreaming show.

Although livestreaming continually produces marked barrages, this kind of markedness is highly likely to be reversed into unmarkedness after a brief period in two respects. According to Paul Clark, youth subcultures in China have been defined by cyber language since the introduction of the Internet (Clark, 2012: 180), and its radical presentation is unprecedented in the age of livestreaming. One example is shuaping (lit. screen washer). This cyber slang word originally meant spamming abusive and unwanted information in an Internet forum or other public cyberspaces.² In China’s livestreaming, shuaping refers to those barrages that flood repetitively onto the screen from different fans. They are usually incited by the action or the utterance from a streamer or other marked barrages. It is not, however, deemed a negative sign (like spam) by the fandom. On the contrary, the frequency of shuaping has already become a popular norm during a livestreaming show, whether the attitude is supportive or offensive. Nevertheless, those moments are unsustainable no matter how popular the streamer is, because everything that just happened minutes or even seconds before may be immediately forgotten when other controversial or contentious issues arise. Another aspect is that once a marked barrage from livestreaming fandom is expanded, it may easily transfer into the unmarked, therefore, this livestreaming fandom ceases to keep its marginality. Another example as a popular cyber buzzword is liang (lit. coldness). Originated from barrages of a livestreaming of TI7 (The International 2017 of Dota 2 world championship tournament), it is now widely used to mean something about to be done for.³ Despite its livestreaming origin, liang has become a buzzword in people’s daily lives and is now in widespread use in and outside the online world. The phrase liang indicates the loss of markedness of the barrage during mainstreaming.

The temporal markedness of barrage in China’s livestreaming is not solely based on the tendency of instability among textual signs. Like other cyber fandom, such as the fandom of online literature in China (Tian and Adorjan, 2016: 890–895), fandom has a direct impact on livestreaming production by providing considerable financial support. China’s livestreaming platforms have long embraced tipping, allowing fans to tip the streamer they watch in exchange for extra attention from the performer or merely a show of encouragement. As stated by iResearch (2018b: 8), tips from users account for 89.3% of the total revenues of China’s game livestreaming in 2017, and the figure for the year 2014 (the year in which China’s livestreaming began to commercialize) was 100%. Tippers are entitled to marked barrages, such as colored texts, showy shapes accompanying their screen name, or customized tips, which are all difficult to be ignored (e.g. ‘Super Rocket’ in Figure 3).

Figure 3.

‘Super Rocket’ (2000 CNY each time) in Douyu.

Not all tippers are equally marked. On the basis of a questionnaire concerning tippers’ intentions in China’s livestreaming from iResearch (see Table 1), the majority of tippers want to show their support to a streamer they admire (38.8%), or to entertain themselves (37.2%) or acknowledge the streamer’s effort (30.9%), which all seem relatively casual. Some tippers, however, are more purposeful when tipping. They may aim to get a higher position on the tipping list (15.5%) or to interact with the streamer (26.4% overall). The more rewards fans hope to get from their tipping, the more they may have to pay, and the greater the possibility that the fan will be marked. This is illustrated in Figure 3 where the screen name of ‘Super Rocket’ tipper (Niuzong) shows up on the lower end of the gigantic golden rocket. Streamers, especially professional streamers, rely heavily on financial support from fans, and fans who pay frequently also intend to stay in the marked VIP zone. This tipping system is also one of the major differences between non-live streaming and livestreaming barrage: In a non-live streaming (e.g. YouTube), there is no distinctive markedness for the barrage by paid-up ones, thereby flattening the hierarchies between video makers and fans (Zhu, 2017). Thus, there is almost no chance for fans who do not pay or pay only modest amounts for their barrages to be marked during a livestreaming show.

Table 1.

A survey of 828 people by a questionnaire: why do you tip in livestreaming? (iResearch, 2018a: 16).

To show support to the streamer	38.80%
To entertain themselves	37.20%
To give credits to the streamer’s effort	30.90%
To tip randomly	24.90%
To interact with the streamer	23.30%
To get higher position on the tipping list	15.50%
To follow others	15.00%
To get the streamer’s personal contact information	14.40%
To meet the streamer’s request	12.00%
To get the authority of supervision	11.20%

Interestingly, unmarked barrages sent by ordinary fans constitute the majority of livestreaming fandom. In China’s game livestreaming (iResearch, 2018b: 31), for instance, only 17% of users paid for their barrages in the first half of 2018. The markedness of barrage in China’s livestreaming is usually highlighted among those who tip generously, while a streamer’s ongoing popularity is heavily maintained by the majority of fans who do not pay or only pay lower amounts. Barrages in China’s livestreaming count on the markedness and its reversal to achieve meaningful communication. However, this kind of markedness is shortly replaced by another one. In other words, few barrages are remembered off the screen when the show ends. The effect of specific circumstances made by shuaping in livestreaming is much more effective than any individual text, although the minority triggers most of them. Most fans are not inclined to create popular barrages with own ideas but simply repeat others’ barrages just for fun (e.g. ‘666’ barrages from top-right picture in Figure 1). The cohesiveness inside the fandom may generate a large number of shuaping at any moment, while the productive comments may go unnoticed or are forgotten quickly. Even the most significant (usually the most expensive) tips can only stay visible for several seconds and are abruptly replaced by follow-ups. Although there are some exceptions, like ‘liang’, few would bother tracing the origins once they are mainstreamed. Thus, the markedness and its reversal of tipping barrages in China’s livestreaming is characteristically transient.

The paradox of spatial markedness of barrage in China’s livestreaming fandom

The similarity between barrage and cinematographic subtitles, which is only briefly mentioned in the introduction, embodies an ambiguous track of cultural tradition in Chinese characters. To clarify this ambiguity, it is critical to understand how language influences the way of thinking and living habits in different cultures. Marshall McLuhan (1962: 27) points out that ‘the phonetic alphabet makes a break between eye and ear, between semantic meaning and visual code’, and people who speak Chinese, ‘people of the ear’ as he refers to them, still widely use ideographic characters, which directly connect the shape and pronunciation to the meaning compared with those who speak phonetic languages. In his interpretation of McLuhan’s fragment, Xiuyan Fu (2016: 137) maintains that written Chinese is a semiotic unity of ‘shape’, ‘meaning’ and ‘sound’ which avoids the mutual exclusion between eye and ear in written phonetic languages. This characteristic leads to the broad diversity of oral dialects and numerous polyphones in Chinese. As a consequence, cinemas in China are now accustomed to displaying intralingual on-screen subtitles for fear that viewers may miss or misunderstand the verbal information. For Anglophone audiences, by contrast, intralingual subtitles tend to be mostly used for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, or for accented English or an indigenous variety. Otherwise, intralingual subtitles are not a phenomenon in Anglophone contexts (Dwyer, 2017b: 19–58), and they may feel peculiar if they see intralingual on-screen subtitles, since modern oral English has a generally acceptable norm of pronunciation and discernible characters. In contrast, Chinese audiences have adapted to watching videos with overlaid signs to assist their understanding of oral texts.

When this habit is applied to livestreaming, however, streamers find it impossible to make subtitles when the show is still in progress. Thus, barrage, a seeming variation of subtitles, is generally accepted as an integral part of livestreaming, since it provides a quick way of communication between streamer and fans in a virtual space. Barrages in livestreaming are written signs, but they create a close atmosphere for the fans just like a physical public sphere does. A streamer typically responds to barrages with his or her voice or performance. Livestreaming provides not only the important medium of barrage transmission but also the only space that fans expect maximum interaction. As some researchers point out, spontaneous communication among fans or between streamer and fans is virtually unpredictable, which strengthens the authentic feelings experienced by fans (Yu and Xu, 2017: 148). It is not surprising that the earliest livestreaming platforms in China arose from video gaming chatrooms (Zhang and Hjorth, 2017: 3). The barrage in livestreaming offers one more medium besides traditional media, like vision and/or audition. Similar to playing online games, barrage sending invites active interaction, which promotes instant feedback from other individuals. Paul Clark (2012: 161) concludes that the rise of the Chinese Internet by the first decade of the 21st century has created a multilocal cyberspace for the construction, elaboration, and sharing of youth identities in China. Currently, popular culture has blurred the border between the public and the private with the development of online technologies. The publicness of the private domain in China has experienced an unparalleled level of personal exposure, since everything in daily life can now be demonstrated and discussed on the Internet. The boundary is even more blurred in this new space, especially on various livestreaming platforms.

As the main arena of all kinds of livestreaming activities, zhibojian, the virtual space for livestreaming, plays a key role in building spatial markedness. It was originally referred to as the studio for on-air broadcasts, but has quickly become a central predominant part of the jargon in China’s livestreaming business. In zhibojian, fans who enjoy communicating with barrages are very attached to their streamer. In this relatively isolated space, the markedness of livestreaming fandom as a subcultural community is recognized by both the fandom and outsiders. To fans from other zhibojian or audiences who do not belong to livestreaming fandom, this kind of behavior and wordplay during the livestreaming is impenetrable, which makes zhibojian marked for them. However, to those hardcore fans inside the fandom, zhibojian is deemed a self-marked space that allows connection to all fellows of the same taste in the same camp.

Michel Foucault (1986) coins the term ‘heterotopia’ to describe spaces in non-hegemonic conditions in human history. To him, spaces which are considered heterotopia come from the oppositions between binary spaces, such as private spaces and public spaces (23), and it ‘begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time’ (26). This term may bring an insightful perspective and allows us to better understand the role of zhibojian in China’s livestreaming as marked space. In zhibojian, traditional time is separated into pieces of ‘livestreaming time’, starting at the beginning of a show and ending at the time when the show ends. During the show, fans are capable of being in an immersive environment when they are enjoying barrages as if nothing outside of zhibojian matters. Xin Yu and Xu (2017: 148–149) summarize four factors of flow experiences in livestreaming with barrage: the high sensibility of information from barrages, the evocation of pleasure by viewing barrages, the passion of initiative participation and the remote representation of interaction between barrages. With the help of barrage, zhibojian creates a self-marked space that fans may find themselves indulging in, because their full attention is focused on what is happening inside of zhibojian without noticing the lapse of time. Fans in zhibojian are indeed in a private space physically, but they also enjoy living a virtual public place, which is similar to Focault’s original definition of heterotopia.

To visualize his point, Foucault (1986) uses the mirror as an example of heterotopias:

The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent. (p. 24)

In livestreaming, however, cameras and screens from zhibojian become more complicated than the heterotopic mirror. The streamer watches the live screen, which continually includes oneself by a selfie camera during the livestreaming. However, for fans, their main focuses are those barrages sent by themselves, which are also a textual reflection. The juxtaposition between the streamer’s physical space and many virtual spaces consists of various barrages displaying simultaneously in one public space, which could only be achieved in China’s livestreaming fandom. Although the space in zhibojian is virtual, there is real communication between streamer and fans and the fans’ reaction is often triggered solely by the streamer’s behavior. In this sense, zhibojian and Foucault’s mirror are alike. However, there is a difference between the mirror in reality and the mirror on a livestreaming platform. In reality, a mirror is normally used by individuals as a relatively private space (there are mirrors in public, but they are usually reserved for private use, for example, latrine mirror or rearview mirror). In livestreaming, however, zhibojian is a public space with a polyphonic mode that leaves a multiplicity of possible voices intact (Johnson, 2013: 298). According to the latest data (iiMedia Research, 2018: 28), 80.8% of regular livestreaming fans are below 30 years of age. According to Cunningham et al. (2019: 9), rural male Chinese rely on smartphones for basic communication, but these provide entertainment and interactivity previously limited, inaccessible, or unaffordable until livestreaming becomes available. More and more Chinese youngsters feel passionate about livestreaming, and they see the barrage as a significant part of their daily lives and a huge opportunity to express themselves freely in any field they are involved in, because it offers a relatively relaxed environment to express themselves freely. At some moments like shuaping, the screen is so overlaid with barrages that the whole live picture is blocked, which may turn the subject over during a livestreaming show (see top-right of Figure 1), and they get accustomed to enjoying or joining these moments as well.

The last most marked peculiarity of barrage in zhibojian is its semiotic distinction, which constitutes another element of comparison to heterotopia. Foucault presupposes a system of opening and closing that both isolates the outsiders and makes them seem penetrable, but in reality, they are semiotically excluded. It appears that no one is restricted to enter any heterotopic spaces, but ‘that is only an illusion: we think we enter where we are, by the very fact that we enter, excluded’ (Foucault, 1986: 26). Livestreaming represents the analogous illusion of cyber heterotopia: anyone can choose to enter any zhibojian at one’s will, as long as some essential devices such as a smartphone with network access are provided. However, people who are not a part of this livestreaming fandom are semiotically excluded from it, because they are confused when attempting to decipher the messages in those contents even though they can read the written words and lines. In Figure 1 (top-right), for example, an audience that is not familiar with shuaping would be confused about why everyone is enjoying it even though overwhelming barrages flood over the streaming picture. This response is another self-marked sign of livestreaming fandom as a subculture community. Fans often create catchphrases (such as liang) to communicate with each other through barrages, which marks the semiotic boundary of their fandom. Although some phrases are reversed into daily expressions out of livestreaming fandom, it is difficult or even impossible to identify the real significance within the context for those who enter zhibojian for the first time.

A semiotic distinction is even more critical among fans inside the same livestreaming fandom. As was mentioned in the previous section, the tipping system in livestreaming creates a hierarchy between tippers and ordinary fans, that is, more privileges are granted to fans who tip more generously through barrages during the livestreaming. These privileges can even sometimes go beyond the virtual world and lead to a variety of offline activities. However, our focus is on how China’s livestreaming fans create an inner semiotic distinction with privileges by tipping. For instance, when a fan sends a ‘Super Rocket’ (see Figure 3), Douyu’s most expensive tip, in a zhibojian that is streaming a shooter game, massive notifications are shown as barrages in all other zhibojian which are also streaming shooter games. Everyone from other zhibojian can enter this ‘rocketed’ zhibojian to earn bonus points to the account by clicking the notification. At this moment, the zhibojian that features ‘Super Rocket’ is highly marked by the whole platform. As for streamers, it is also a common practice to show their gratitude to top tippers because they too get a large share from tips – this is also one of the fundamental interactions between streamer and fans, especially for top streamers. In this way, those marked barrages are signs of privileged classes that distinguish them from unmarked barrages by common fans. The reputation of generous tippers are even in the same category with the most popular streamers in livestreaming fandom.

Membership is another essential distinction among fans in a same livestreaming fandom. Table 2 shows the semiotic hierarchy of Douyu fans by naming notable titles of royalty borrowed from Western hereditary monarchies. The more noble title one has, the more expenses one has to pay regularly and fans in the same zhibojian can see the honored title being seen by everyone when one is sending barrages. For example, a fan who has the title of ‘king’ in a Douyu zhibojian would show the title (king), the customized avatar, and the screen name in front of the content when these fans are sending barrages, but only the ‘emperor’, the highest identity, can text freely without any restriction from streamer or other supervisors. For a streamer, these VIP members are the main source of income from livestreaming shows, and he or she must pay much more attention to their words and behaviors. This process builds semiotic distinctions of marked spaces inside China’s livestreaming fandom. Although the commoner, that is, the middle sign, in this case, can benefit from top tippers when they get a more level-up speed or limited individuation to their barrages in zhibojian, most of them have no intention of paying that much to show off in cyberspace.

Table 2.

The semiotic distinction between Douyu users based on membership.⁴

Privilege	Title
	Emperor	King	Duke	Earl	Viscount	Knight	Free user
Arrival greeting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Characteristic texts	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Invisibility (optional)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Zhibojian supervision	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Customized tips	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Unlimited immunity	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No

There goes the paradox within the spatial markedness of barrage in China’s livestreaming fandom. On the one hand, the fandom of livestreaming in China is booming with the help of barrage due to zhibojian’s uniqueness in providing unprecedented interactivity in a marked space. On the other hand, this kind of fandom has formed self-marked distinctions which exclude a large number of outsiders or even insiders, to include the middle sign, and hence eventually restricts its sustainable development. In today’s China, more and more livestreaming platforms are popular among so-called ‘low’ or vulgar fans (Zeng and He, 2017: 59), but the communication in livestreaming has become a lifestyle rather than merely a way to entertain oneself. Still, the mainstream of netizens, which includes the unmarked who never watch livestreaming, may be disapproving or overtly against this new form of entertainment. Furthermore, due to the limited financial incentive for most participants in China’s livestreaming, only a few streamers have the opportunity to become real-life celebrities and cultural icons, and most of them experience only transient, fleeting fame. The spatial markedness eventually blocks the rise of China’s livestreaming to a bigger stage.

What makes barrage commenting a significant online practice in China’s livestreaming industry is its interactive instantaneity and unpredictability. Compared to barrage in non-live streaming, barrage in livestreaming features much stronger markedness, represented by the use of buzzwords, tipping, and membership. Nevertheless, two semiotic paradoxes of the barrage, which are initiated by two interrelated kinds of markedness, in China’s livestreaming fandom have been identified. The first one, which is mainly temporal, highlights the dilemma for China’s livestreaming fans to continually maintain their voices as the marked. The second one, which is primarily spatial, illuminates the limitations of livestreaming brought forth by transmission of barrages in marked spaces due to several semiotic distinctions. The latter is the inevitable outcome of the former, and both may be the reason that it is challenging to keep one’s subcultural characteristics in the cyber fandom of China. De Certeau (1988: 37) points out that the space of a tactic is the space of the other, and what it wins it cannot keep. The same phenomenon occurs in China’s livestreaming fandom.

The pros and cons of China’s livestreaming and its fandom

Neil Postman (1986: 101–102) noted the major problem of television culture in the 1980s’ America: television provided a new definition of truth, that is, the credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition, and the credibility only refers to the impression of sincerity, authenticity, vulnerability, or attractiveness. Although Postman’s pessimism on TV culture may be exaggerated, his main concern that we may ‘amuse ourselves to death’ has been surprisingly confirmed by multiple contemporary digital entertainments.

One position shared by many in contemporary popular culture is that the form is more important than the content. The same is true in China’s livestreaming. In fact, livestreaming, coupled with the barrage, may emerge as the future of digital China. Attractiveness is the lifeline for most Chinese streamers, and many of them are willing to take ‘edge-ball’ (Cunningham et al., 2019: 11) risks, including the use of uncivilized words, unprotected extreme sports, or even pornographic performances to attract fans. Similarly, barrages such as verbal aggression, groundless allegations, or even Internet trolling are increasingly rampant in China’s livestreaming (Zeng and He, 2017: 58–59). By contrast, many streamers who are content-oriented enjoy much less popularity than those who only sell nothing but vulgarity to make quick money (Zhang and Hjorth, 2017: 7).

In China’s livestreaming industry, a wide range of options of accepting and sending barrages are shifting fans as fans choose their livestreaming preferences, which reflects a two-way selection process in the cyber era. However, this selection is relatively spontaneous without sufficient supervision. Fans do not have to take either legal or moral responsibility for the ill-suited barrages, since most of them are anonymous and therefore difficult to hold accountable. As for censorship methods in China’s livestreaming, they generally fall into two parts, including internal censorship by the platforms and external censorship by officials. Internal censorship includes regulations about the content of performances and punishments such as imposing fines, zhibojian closure, or prosecution against lawbreakers.⁵ External censorship includes four official regulations from the State Council in 2016 (iResearch, 2018b: 12). However, these regulations are suggestions rather than severe legal restrictions; thus, there are still no specific acts and/or legal sanctions against those violators. Although streamers enjoy a higher degree of economic stability and opportunity than their Western online creator counterparts due to China’s advanced e-commerce platform integrations, this is offset by the greater precarity they face around the cultural politics of livestreaming (Cunningham et al., 2019: 7). Cybercrime has already become problematic around the world with the boost of the Internet economy, and livestreaming could potentially make the matter even worse because of limited or ineffective censorship, especially in China.

The Postmanian prophecy, however, reveals only one side of the coin. There are also emerging advantages to livestreaming, as was shown by cyber fandom. With the help of barrage commenting, fans exert a huge influence on various platforms by their actions in livestreaming, and more and more progressive organizations and individuals have come to realize the immense potential of livestreaming in the long run. They have launched projects which share professional, thought-provoking, and sometimes profound viewpoints, making best use of the robust interactivity of the barrage. The story of Nvliu (Zhang and Hjorth, 2017: 12–17) provides an outstanding example of how to make high-quality livestreaming by expressing streamer’s agency as an intellectual figure and specialist. The last example is not isolated. Table 3 highlights some positive examples of China’s livestreaming being utilized in other industries besides the show business. One can see the potential value of livestreaming in the inter-industrial field, as well as its potential for positive impact in journalism, education, and healthcare. Livestreaming will appeal to those who are eager to learn new skills and to try new entertainment channels. Also, livestreaming is playing an increasingly important role as an essential medium between such people and the outside world.

Table 3.

China’s livestreaming being utilized in other industries (iiMedia Research, 2018).

Industry	The role of barrages	Case
News report	To give users a sense of immersion and immediacy	Inke in several games of the 2016 Summer Olympics
Education	To overcome the limitation of physical attendance	Online courses by livestreaming in Xi’an when physical class was suspended due to heavy smog in January 2017
Medical industry	To give fans a chance to communicate and maximize the value of quality medical resources	A Q&A livestreaming about the ultrasound treatment of tumors organized by People’s Daily in April 2017
E-commerce	To innovate methods of e-commerce marketing	Taobao, the largest Chinese online shopping website, tried to use professionally generated content in livestreaming as its marketing strategy in November and December 2017
Public interest	To exchange new concepts about commonwealth	A livestreaming program for helping others to find families entitled Waiting for Me made in 2017, which has attracted widespread public attention

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is determined to build a healthier environment of livestreaming. In the past few years, the government has also paid more attention to potential social effects and future problems in the livestreaming industry. They have banned 78 edge-ball livestreaming platforms, suspended 1404 streamers’ accounts, and closed over 5400 zhibojian since 2016 (iResearch, 2018a: 8). An increasing number of famous streamers who have failed to comply with legal expectations have been expelled from the business, and some of them have even been dealt with according to laws from other fields (Cunningham et al., 2019: 12). Although more systematic acts have yet to be enacted, the new order of China’s livestreaming is on the right track with improvement in censorship oversight of platforms.

As Marcel Danesi (2010: 148) notes, perhaps in no other medium is the carnivalsque nature of the human psyche more manifest today than it is online, and this might be the response of the new semiotic phenomenon to novel technologies. In China, livestreaming represents the most promising side of online media with technological innovations that break the boundaries of time and space. After all, livestreaming is a neutral semiotic form which needs enhancement in the new age not only through efforts from fandom, but also from governments, organizations, and individuals. Recently, several livestreaming platforms that feature barrages such as live.me and live.ly have been built by Chinese companies, and they are gaining international popularity (see Note 4). It may be a sign for China to promote barrage commenting to the global market of livestreaming.

In the final analysis, China’s livestreaming, which has recently become an emerging field, should not be defined as an unmanageable troublemaker to society or a small subset of the whole entertainment business. The future of this phenomenal industry remains open with both promising prospects and potential challenges looming on the horizon, but the barrage will likely continue to play a pivotal role. Multiple research projects focused on the role of the barrage in livestreaming are yet to come. Hopefully, this article will serve as a catalyst for additional research on these topics which will, in turn, lead to progressive improvement in our management of livestreaming for the future benefit of Chinese society and its relationship with the international community.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The National Social Science Fund of China (NSSFC) ‘A study on the effect and optimization of the dissemination of mainstream ideology in Chinese cyberspace’ (Project Code: 19CKS030).

ORCID iD

Zhuo Chen

Notes

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