“Let’s Go, Baby Forklift!”: Fandom Governance and the Political Power of Cuteness in China
Name
20563051211024960.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.51 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b448d7210288da52cddb4a5b27ab656b
Author(s)
Wong, Jamie
Lee, Crystal
Long, Vesper Keyi
Wu, Di
Jones, Graham M
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Social Media + Society
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Citation
Wong, Jamie, Lee, Crystal, Long, Vesper Keyi, Wu, Di and Jones, Graham M. 2021. "“Let’s Go, Baby Forklift!”: Fandom Governance and the Political Power of Cuteness in China." Social Media + Society, 7 (2).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This article describes how the Chinese state borrows from the culture of celebrity fandom to implement a novel strategy of governing that we term “fandom governance.” We illustrate how state-run social media employed fandom governance early in the COVID-19 pandemic when the country was convulsed with anxiety. As the state faced a crisis, state social media responded with a propagandistic display of state efficacy, broadcasting a round-the-clock livestream of a massive emergency hospital construction project. Chinese internet users playfully embellished imagery from the livestream. They unexpectedly transformed the construction vehicles into cute personified memes, with Baby Forklift and Baby Mud Barfer (a cement mixer) among the most popular. In turn, state social media strategically channeled this playful engagement in politically productive directions by resignifying the personified vehicles as celebrity idols. Combining social media studies with cultural and linguistic anthropology, we offer a processual account of the semiotic mediations involved in turning vehicles into memes, memes into idols, and citizens into fans. We show how, by embedding cute memes within modules of fandom management such as celebrity ranking lists, state social media rendered them artificially vulnerable to a fall in status. Fans, in turn, rallied around to “protect” these cute idols with small but significant acts of digital devotion and care, organizing themselves into fan circles and exhorting each other to vote. In elevating the memes to the status of celebrity idols, state social media thereby created a disposable pantheon of virtual avatars for the state, and consolidated state power around citizens’ voluntary response to vulnerability. We analyze fandom governance as a new development in the Chinese state’s long history of governing citizens through the management of emotion.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anthropology Program
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211024960
