This paper uses different digital research methods to conduct three small surveys around an ongoing public social event, Lockdown in Shanghai.
A brief research of trends in the hotness of related topics using search engine tools and social media topic analysis tools, as well as a look at relevant online news to contextualize the event.
Using a set of memes created in the context of Shanghai lockdown as an example, to interpret what Shifman (2014) writes in his book Memes in Digital Culture about the reasons for the re-circulation of memes.
Follow the steps introduced by Robert Kozinets (2002) in netnography for studying online communities to analyze the content posted by a blogger on social media during the lockdown.
1. Use search engine tools and social media topic analysis tools to study trends in trending topics
In late March 2022, a large number of epidemics broke out in Shanghai China, on the 27th, Shanghai decided to announce a phased blockade of the city, and on April 3rd, a city-wide blockade was announced and the blockade was extended (BBC, 2022a). It can be seen from the keyword search trend chart of Google Trends about 'Shanghai' and 'Shanghai lockdown' and the trend chart of topic #Shanghai Epidemic# on Weibo, a famous social media platform in China, this topic has aroused extensive discussion in the past month.
The strict lockdown policy restricts residents from going out on their own, and residents rely on government distribution for their food, however, the sudden total blockade and extended blockade have overwhelmed food transportation, distribution management, and ordering systems, 'food shortages' occurred in the well-known, modern city, Shanghai (BBC, 2022b).
Such a situation triggered the rise of group-buying (Bloomberg, 2022), that is, where neighbors living in the same community with the same buying needs form groups on WeChat and, after reaching a consensus within the group, purchase products in a unified manner, with certain residents designated as the head of the group, who are responsible for posting messages within the group, collecting demand, placing orders, collecting funds, coordinating logistics and distributing the goods once they arrive ( Catterall, 2022). Group buying became one of the few ways for families to get enough food during the blockade (Bloomberg, 2022), and information about group buying tips was widely published online (SMSH, 2022). The graph below shows data related to the Weibo hashtag #ShanghaiGroup-buying, which can be seen to have generated a lot of discussion among netizens on 11 April.
As can be seen from the Reading trends and Discussing trends in figure3, the buzz on the topic of Shanghai group-buying peaked on April 11th. As can be seen from Trends in the number of originals, Weibo users began posting content about Shanghai group-buying from April 4, peaking on April 8, and the number of originals posting about the topic has remained at a certain level since then.
The creation of a social application-based buying group in the context of this particular lockdown has led to various discussions on social networks, such as the introduction of group-buying methods, care for the elderly who are unfamiliar with electronics, discussions of different human natures in group buying (kindness, overbearing, etc.).
What follows is two mini research of two social phenomena that arose in the context of this Shanghai lockdown event. The first is a set of memes images born out of the discussion about the 'head of the buying group' in the Shanghai communities, which was widely circulated on social media. The second is a story about an internet influencer who became acquainted with an elderly neighbor because of group-buying during the Shanghai lockdown. She posted interesting interactions with the elderly on her social media in the form of text and pictures, which aroused discussion among her followers.
2. Research on Memes ‘What does Shanghai rely on to live now? -- Chief (head of the buying group on Wechat）’
Introduction:
In this era, almost every major public event will produce a series of memes (Shifman, 2014). The lockdown event in Shanghai this time is no different. The picture below is a widely circulated picture recently. The picture itself is a poster of a TV series called ‘My Chief and My Regiment’, netizen added two sentences above the poster, linking this TV series poster with the public event, Group-Buying (in Chinese, the pronunciation of 'chief' is the same as 'head of the group', both '团长').
After this, users began to create a series of related extensions pictures (see below), some of which have been turned into emojis and spread across social media. The creation and distribution of these extensions are in line with one of Shifman's (2014) descriptions of one of the attributes of Memes, reproduce by various means of repackaging or imitation.
Next, I will use this example, according to Shifman's (2014) theory, to analyze the motivation of netizens to extend the creation of memes.
Interpretation of the motivation of the netizen to recreate memes:
Shifman (2014) explains why people recreate videos and images produced by others from three initial prisms, rooted in economic, social, and cultural logics of participation. I will attempt to follow these three perspectives to analyze this series of memes about group-buying in Shanghai.
First, from the economic logic point of view. Since the most valuable resource in the information age is not information, but people’s attention to it (Shifman, 2014). Create content related to trending topics or images may be easier to gain attention because they are similar to trending content and therefore appear in the platform's 'suggestions' column, or as a highly relevant search result when people are looking for the 'original' content. So in this event, the successful picture can be considered as the first widely disseminated picture, i.e. (probably) figure1, after that figure2,3,4 were created for economic reasons because it is easier to get attention by making such extended pictures.
In addition, after I clicked on the topic #Shanghai Group-buying#, I found that some brands, especially food-related brands, reposted related content (see the picture below, a post by a coffee brand's official Weibo account), but this content is not directly related to the brand itself. It can be guessed that the brand doing this just to gain more exposure on social media.
Second, analyze this event from the social logic of participation. The people who recreate and disseminate these images, on the one hand, want to demonstrate their digital knowledge, photoshopped image ability and unique creativity, and on the other hand, the content they create is related to a widely shared image, video or formula, which can show that they belong to this group (Shifman, 2014).
In this event, the first aspect is well understood. The creator hopes to create and disseminate these pictures to prove that he understands the whole situation about this event, has the skills to make creative pictures and has unique association and creativity to secondary create.
In the second aspect, the 'widely shared picture' can be considered as the first widely disseminated picture (figure 4) in this event, and the 'widely shared video' can be understood as the TV series well known to the Chinese. ' A widely shared formula' can be: a poster or video screenshot of the TV series + a sentence of copy related to the group buying behavior.
In conjunction with the Shifman‘s (2014) conclusions of this content can be said that, these creators indicate and construct their individuality and their affiliation with the larger group-buying community in the context of the Shanghai lockdown.
Third, from the perspective of cultural logic. In this section, Shifman (2014) refers to an analytical method suggested by Jean Burgess: “treating the content of social media as mediating ideas that are practiced within social networks, shaped by cultural norms and expectations”. the cultural norms are often rooted in the history of pop-culture genres and fan cultures. In this case, if needing to analyze this point in-depth, we can analyze it from the culture of Chinese war TV series and the fans culture of television series.
Shifman (2014) also mentioned that ‘the practices of re-creating videos and images blur the lines between private and public, professional and amateur, market- and non-market-driven activities.’ When the author searched for related content, he found that a rap enthusiast created a rap-style song related to this topic and uploaded it to a music platform and video platform (see below figure and link). In terms of views and comments, the song has received a certain level of attention. This seems to be a practical example of a discussion about 'the boundaries between professional and amateur music production'. With the development of technology, a large number of amateurs can be driven by interest to produce some professional works that were previously considered to have a high threshold. It seems that such a phenomenon can enrich people's cultural life and promote people's communication. However, does a large number of such behaviors lead to the emergence of a large number of shoddy works and violate strict artistic rules?
3. Research on User-Generated Content on social media
Background
During the Shanghai lockdown, the living conditions of the elderly in Shanghai were also widely discussed. A Shanghai-based blogger__王逅逅, posted her story of interacting with an elderly neighbor during the lockdown as text or pictures on her 3 different social media (Weibo，Douban，Xiaohongshu) , which caught my attention. This is a story of kindness between neighbors that happened because of the city lockdown and group-buying, which is very prominent in the current social network environment full of complaints, blame and negative information because of the lockdown, so I decided to use this story as a backdrop for a mini research.
The posts posted by this blogger are very suitable for content analysis, because the type of these posts is consistent, and most of the posts are recorded in words and pictures of her life fragments, which are original and full of story images. Her post can be considered a silhouette of a resident in the context of this social event, and is a good source of material to help us understand the living conditions of residents during the lockdown in Shanghai. The below post is a good example：
Below is a basic introduction to the story of the blogger and the old man, as this story was first posted on the Weibo platform, the following storyline is based on the blogger's related posts on Weibo.
On 28 February (before the lockdown in Shanghai), the blogger first mentioned her neighbor on Weibo: her neighbor used to watch TV at 3 or 4 am, which affected the blogger's rest, and after communicating with her neighbor, she found out that it is an elderly man living alone.
On 31 March (the third day of the lockdown), the blogger left a note to the elderly neighbor, telling him that he could ask her for help if he needed anything during the blockade.
On 31 March (the third day of the lockdown), the blogger left a note to the elderly neighbor, telling him that he could ask her for help if he needed anything during the blockade.
On April 9, the blogger published a post about the elderly neighbour who gave her two sets of comic books as a gift for her help, paid 500 RMB for the group purchase and wrote a handwritten letter, which received a very high level of attention online. The post reads as below：
From 10 April to 19 April, the blogger continued to update her interactions with her elderly neighbor.
Research Method
My research methodology is inspired by the six steps of netnography approach to studying online communities written by Robert Kozinets (2002). 1. Definition of the research field. 2. Community identification and selection. 3. Community observation and data collection. 4. Data analysis. 5. Research ethics. 6.Findings and solutions.
I will use a simple quantitative research method to count the number of likes, comments and forwards this blogger has received on all posts during the lockdown, March 28, 2022, to April 19, 2022, to study this question.
1.Definition of the research field
This paper will study a question in the context of this event. Are people more interested in positive content online during the lockdown?
2.Community identification and selection
As this story was first posted on the Weibo platform, I chose to do the research on the blogger's Weibo platform.
3.Community observation and data collection
I first sorted out and counted all the posts published by this blogger from March 28, 2022, when Shanghai began to block, to April 19, 2022, and divided them into 3 types:
Type 1：About the neighbor
Type 2：About Shanghai lockdown, including everything about the lockdown, except posts related to an elderly neighbor.
Type 3：Other posts, are posts that have nothing to do with this Shanghai lockdown event.
I then took screenshots of all the posts and numbered them as below：
4.Data analysis
The number of posts for each of the three types of posts was then counted by date, as shown in the chart below, with one 'O' representing one post with relevant content.
From 28 March 2022 to 19 April 2022, the blogger__王逅逅 published a total of 57 original posts on the Weibo platform, including a total of 19 about an elderly neighbor, 17 original posts about Shanghai lockdown-related content, and 21 other posts.
I then counted the number of likes, comments and forwards for each post, and calculated the average, as shown in the graph below. As I did not find a crawler tool to use and there were not many relevant posts, I directly entered the numbers.
In terms of mean number, even after removing the extreme figure of 6a, the number of likes, comments and retweets on posts about neighborhood content far exceeds that of the other two types of posts. type1 and type2 are both about lockdown content, but the three mean numbers for posts about the elderly neighbor (Type1) are both higher than those for Type2.
5. Research ethics
I realized during implementation that I should have informed this blogger of my research, so I asked her opinion on Weibo on 20 April but did not receive a reply. So I will hide this link once I have received the marks for the assignment.
6.Findings and solutions
During the lockdown, the internet was flooded with negative news about complaining and blaming, and people seemed to be overwhelmed by negativity. This mini research goes some way to proving that even in a negative reality, people are still more impressed by positive stories online.
References
BBC. (2022a) Why Shanghai has abandoned its ‘relaxed’ approach to Covid. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-61023811
BBC. (2022b) Shanghai: Residents 'running out of food' in Covid lockdown. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-61019975
Bloomberg. (2022) Shanghai’s Locked-Down Elite Are Joining Hunt for Groceries. Available from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-08/shanghai-s-locked-down-elite-are-joining-hunt-for-groceries
Catterall. (2022) Community Group Buying in Pandemic-Stricken Shanghai. Available from: https://pandaily.com/community-group-buying-in-pandemic-stricken-shanghai/
Shifman, L. (2014) Memes in digital culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
SMSH. (2022) The FAQ: Everything to Know About Group Buying Your Groceries. Available from: https://www.smartshanghai.com/articles/shopping/the-faq-everything-to-know-about-group-buying-your-groceries
Kozinets, R.V. (2002) The field behind the screen: Using netnography for marketing research in online communities. Journal of marketing research, 39(1), pp.61-72.