The Internet-based visual humor as text representative of the state of the Chinese public sphere

`being against the cardinal principles set forth in the Constitution; endangering state security, divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification; damaging state honor and interests; instigating ethnic hatred or discrimination and jeopardizing ethnic unity; jeopardizing state religious policy, propagating heretical or superstitious ideas; spreading rumors, disrupting social order and stability; disseminating obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, brutality and terror or abetting crime; humiliating or slandering others, trespassing on the lawful rights and interests of others; and other contents forbidden by laws and administrative regulations'.

The legitimacy of these regulations are national security reasons that indeed are present in every country, however, the main point is the scope of freedom of speech that becomes very much limited due to the Chinese law. As Min Jiang points out contrasting the attitude towards information security in the US and China, `The U.S. approach is individual-based, rights-centered, and market-driven. The Chinese approach, on the other hand, is state-centered. It emphasizes individual responsibilities over individual rights, maximum economic benefits, and minimal political risk for the one-party state'.

The text of the white paper follows the main Internet law - NPC Standing Committee's Decision on Safeguarding Internet Security (published December 28, 2000). The document lists the same requirements for the published content which should be met by the Internet providers. Article 16 of the Decision states that the monitoring of the content published by users should be prevented from further dissemination by the Internet providers, and that the recording of such incidents should also be kept by the providers to be further provided to the corresponding governmental department.

A closer look on the later published National People's Congress Standing Committee Decision concerning Strengthening Network Information Protection gives more information on the ways of ensuring the `harmonious environment'. For example, Article 6 imposes an obligation on the users to provide real personal information to the providers at the registration stage.

Sina Weibo as the Main Platform for Internet Discussion Sina Weibo (or sometimes referred to as just Weibo) corporation (xоnlаng wзi bу) is, according to the introductory information posted on its website webio.com, is `a leading social media platform for people to create, distribute and discover Chinese-language content'. The microblogging project was launched on August 14, 2009 by media company SINA, the creator of a digital network SINA.com. Sina.com has several region specific websites in mainland China (www.sina.com.cn), Taiwan (www.sina.com.tw), Hong Kong (www.sina.com.hk), and North America (www.sina.com). Every of the mentioned portals provide the choice of several entertainment and news channels. Weibo.com is a hybrid platform having features of both microblogs (the messages posted through Weibo should not exceed 140 characters) and social networks (with the options of adding personal information, information about preferences, participation of different interest groups, uploading images, music files and video), with the possibility of asymmetric user relations: it is possible for the users to follow the activity of others without being followed by that user. Being called on its introductory web page `a microcosm of Chinese society', Weibo, according to its statistical data, by the end of 2013 had 129.1 million of monthly active users and 61.4 million daily active users. 2.8 billion feeds were shared on Weibo in December 2013 with 2.2 billion feeds containing images. The range of products provided by the platform allows registration of not only individuals, but also organizations; organizations, as well as famous people, need to go through identification process after which they are given a special sign of verification on their pages and are considered officially registered users. Due to this option Weibo has become a popular tool for the rise of accountability among local and provincial governments.

The users of social networking and microblogging services of Weibo.com are also obliged to comply with the regulations imposed by the Ministry, as well as Weibo service is responsible for stopping the inappropriate content. The list of such content is put in the Weibo Community Management Regulations, Article 4 (see Appendix). However, the Internet community has found a clever way of combining self-expression with the obligatory self-censorship in the usage of user-edited images. As Jiang points out, `many Chinese Internet users have become more keenly aware of their rights as netizens and grown more adept at using euphemism, parody, and humor to criticize local and national government policies'.

Some preliminary conclusions for the Chapter 2 are presented below:

1) If Internet community in China is considered a public sphere, then it should also be taken into account that the structure of this public sphere is more or less homogenous, as it was shown through statistics;

2) strict Internet information protection policy does not allow free circulation of all types of information, but leaves space for non-direct ways of sharing it and expressing opinion even on the sensitive topics, such as visual representation.

3. Analysis of User-edited Humorous Images

This chapter presents the results of the visual analysis of the Internet memes circulating in the space of Weibo microblogging service that were censored soon after their publication, and explores their connection with the possibility of interpretation of Weibo-sphere as a separate public sphere of the Chinese society.

For the sampling of the uncensored pictures images of humorous content taken from the accounts of Weibo and published by China Digital Times from January 2013 to May 2014 were taken, 60 images total. There was a single criterion to it - the images had to have a logo of Weibo to make sure they were published there. The censored pictures samples were taken from two sources: the online tool WeiboScope, by daily monitoring the Censored Pictures section from May 28 to June 2 and picking up the images that had humorous realization of the main idea; and from the website of ProPublica `independent non-profit' project by picking up the images of humorous content. In total, 29 censored images from WeiboScope and 31 images from ProPublica were picked and analyzed according to the following methodology of visual analysis suggested by Piotr Sztompka: semiotic, structural and discursive analysis, and afterwards divided into groups according to the topic each image concentrates on.

Sztompka's methodology implies the fourth stage of visual analysis - hermeneutic analysis, which plays the key role in defining the features of the creator. As the personality of the users of Weibo can only be identified by the Internet Service Providers, we cannot carry out this type of visual analysis, as we do not know any information about the user-author except for the nickname. Therefore this type of analysis was omitted in the current research.

For semiotic analysis it is crucial to decipher the signs present in the image. For the interpretation, according to the methodology suggested by Sztompka, it is convenient to use the classification introduced by Charles Pierce, who differentiated three types of signs: icons, indices and symbols. For the semiotic analysis the first step was to define what kind of signs were present in the image, what denotations and connotations they had. The connotations have to be interpreted from the perspective of the Chinese cultural norms, as the images are supposed to circulate in the Chinese Internet cyberspace and are to be perceived by the Chinese. Sztompka also suggests paying attention on the special elements in the image that are the first to gab the audience's attention - any kind of detail which moves all the rest of the picture to the background and bears the key element of meaning. This detail is called a punctum according to the terms of the scholar who introduced it - Bart, and is characterized by him as a `condensed, synthetic way of transmitting the meaning, which is presented to the audience directly without any preliminary analysis'.

Structural analysis is focused on the interpretation of the indicators of social structure expressed through the details of the depicted objects in the image. Discursive analysis is focused on the context which defines the ways in which an image can be interpreted by the audience, which includes the current sociopolitical situation in the society. The audience is free to find new connotations in the image that would correlate with the real situation even if the image was created long before the time of the image perception, and therefore can add or modify the initial meanings presupposed by the author of the image. This process is exceptionally noticeable in the cyberspace, where an anonymous viewer can easily edit an image according to his/her perception of the depicted situation and thus shift the punctum of the image.

Results.

During the analysis 60 popular images from Weibo, 29 images from WeiboScope and 32 images from ProPublica were divided into groups according to the main topics to which the attention of the netizens was supposed to be attracted. The groups defined for the uncensored images include: Leaders, Political system, Inner territorial conflicts, Censorship, Foreign affairs, History, Society, Critique of Officials, Environment, Media, International Organizations. One of the images taken from ProPublica was rendered as Unrelated, because the author failed to find any connection of the image to the Chinese context. The results of the analysis are presented in the form of a table in Appendix 4, the more detailed analysis is made on separate examples of the most large categories, and is presented below.

Critique of Officials .

There are many more people on the island, but the man is placed above all them, moreover, his figure is bigger, which indicates his higher social status and importance. All of the people are fishing with fishing rods, however, the man with the higher social status not only has as many fishing rods as there are people on the island, but is also fishing no fairly - having his rods thrown not in the sea, but in the buckets with the catch of other fishermen. The image has an inscription - a phrase, which means `work hard and get rich', a motto associated with Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. Fishing with a rod is a very underproductive type of labor. The fact that everybody shown in the picture is practically in the same position fishing with the rod symbolizes the equality of the people in their mass on the way to better life. The man is dressed like all others, and even wearing a Mao-style cap, which was popular in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years among the leaders of the CCP as part of their costume that was supposed to show how close to the people their leaders are. Despite being formally close to the people and doing the same thing as they do, this man, however, has another way of earning his living: by taking parts of their catch from everybody. The whole environment is playing for his favor: the whole scene is taking place at night, when the fishermen can see neither what to do to make the process more efficient, nor the fact that they are actually being robbed. Another important detail is the way the people are portrayed: a viewer can hardly see facial expressions of the people, but the face of the official is drawn in detail, and it is obvious by his smiley expression that he is quite satisfied with his comfortable way of living. This fact stresses the unimportance of every single person in the mass, and how well-known those who steal from the `buckets' of these people are. The image was published on Weibo in 2013 in the very beginning of January, and the previous year's case of Bo Xila, a party chief in Chongqing who was accused of organized crimes and large-scale corruption activities, had served as a background. Overall, the image emphasizes the unfair ways officials use thanks to their privileged position, while the people are left `in the dark' working hard to get richer.

The statue does not have its conventional denotation of freedom and democracy due to the replacement of virtually all the details with the elements of the Chinese reality. The statue itself is not a woman but a man, moreover, we can clearly see his profession - he is an official - by the costume. What he is wearing is often called a `Mao suit' - a type of jacket which became popular thanks to Sun Yat-Sen and had been almost a uniform for officials before the 90's. He is quite plump, has a double chin which gives us a hint that his income is high enough to afford overeating. This outfit symbolizing how close the officials should be with the people and how they should not copy blindly the Western trends, is comically combined with the Hermиs belt. The choice of the brand in the picture is not random - Hermиs is claimed to be one of the favorite choices of luxury gifts and accessories for and among the Chinese officials.

Conclusions

This paper was focused on the role of the Internet-based visual humor in the development of a separate Internet-based public sphere in China. The author used postmodernist approach to the interpretation of images circulating on the Internet and considered the images to be non-linear texts which express the public opinion and give the viewer understanding of what is topical in the society. The fact that China pursue a policy, which does not give space for free discussion on political topics, and enforces Internet security regulations, allows the emergence of new ways for the spread of discussions and sharing opinions through unconventional types of communication such as through user-edited visual content.

The debates about the possibility of the emergence and development of a public sphere in China have been very topical since the 60's; however, most of the popular interpretations of the concept of public sphere were based on its interpretation by Habermas. Habermas saw rational debate on the private issues that are significant for the whole society due to their relation to the whole social environment of a state as the key characteristic that defined public sphere, and the influence which the result of such a discussion has on the state's policy would be the main criterion of the identification of the public sphere in a state. However, later the sociological understanding of the public sphere changed as the concept of Habermas started to be considered a normative one, while it was considered that there is a possibility of the development of a distinctive type of public sphere in any separate society. The distinctiveness of a public sphere would be determined by the political culture of a society and its historical background. The most recent interpretations, including the one by Nancy Fraser, imply the simultaneous existence of several public spheres that can be contradictory to each other and not always aiming at promoting changes in the actual policy of the state or at least influencing the government, on the contrary, Fraser thinks that for some public spheres the aim is its existence as a platform for discussion and sharing of opinions. This concept was adopted as a main theoretical basis for the current research, since the Chinese political tradition and the current state of Chinese legislation does not allow the constant direct influence of the people on the governmental decisions.

Under the conditions of restricted freedom of speech, the Chinese have found another platform for the discussion which, from Fraser's point of view, facilitates the development of an independent public sphere. This platform is the Internet. Introduced to China in 1989, it only became widespread in the beginning of the new century; however, we still cannot say that the Internet is available to everybody in the country. However, those who do have the access have found it quite useful for the dissemination of ideas, discussion of popular issues and even criticism of the existing political situation and the government. The main breakthrough which made this development possible was the introduction of Web 2.0 architecture, which put the users' participation in the formation of the cyberspace in the center and did not require the users to provide their personal information, thus making their participation anonymous. The Chinese government's response in the form of censorship regulations, on the one hand, introduced as the necessity for the protection of personal information of users, but on the other hand, providing a legal basis for restricting certain types of politically sensitive information from being freely spread among the users, put an end to the illusive freedom of speech. However, the fact that only automatic textual analysis has been very well developed by now and other types of content place greater obstacles for the programmers, the Internet users resorted to a more elaborate form of communication - visual. Although image recognition is one of the rapidly developing spheres of IT at the moment, the amount of this type of content posted on the Internet every hour and the peculiarities of visual type of information do not allow automatic programs to recognize and delete the necessary information from the web immediately, which gives the information time to spread.

The analysis of the statistical data indicated the current state of the Internet development and coverage in China. A typical user of the Internet in China is an urban resident, 20-29 years old, most likely a student, who uses Internet both from the PC and from the mobile phone with a camera, and therefore can update information as soon as any changes happen. The statistics also indicated that the most popular type of content is images, and therefore the speed of their spread among the users is the highest. The most popular way of sharing any type of content is currently microblogging services and instant messaging applications. While for the registration in these types of services it is, according to the latest updating of the NPC Standing Committee Decision concerning Strengthening Network Information Protection, obligatory to provide personal information, and therefore all the information posted by the users through the service can be traced back to the initiator, as the services have terms of use based upon the Internet regulation laws. However, this still allows the users some time before their posts might get deleted, and therefore images are getting more and more popular as the alternative to verbal way of communication and discussion.

Images are conventionally used as illustrative material for verbal knowledge, however, according to the postmodernist philosophy; an image can be considered a text with several layers of meaning. For the understanding how this works in case of alternative communication in social networks and microblogging websites, the author conducted analysis of visual content published in Weibo microblogging service during 2013-2014, with part of the sample being uncensored, and another part being deleted from the network due to censorship scrutiny, and uncovered through the independent services monitoring the process of posts deletion in Weibo. The analysis was conducted according to three dimensions: semiotic, structural and discursive. The results of the analysis revealed the most popular tools which are used by the users editing visual content for further distribution, and showed the difference in the tools choice for the uncensored and censored images. The tools include the use of icons, indices and symbols, with symbols use being more frequent in the group of uncensored images, while indices are the most popular tool for meaning expression in both groups. The use of punctum is much higher in the group of uncensored images, which suggests that the punctum can be used as a distracter of attention from the details which constitute the whole meaning.

Content analysis revealed that the uncensored pictures are more society-oriented, while deleted pictures are more politics and person-oriented, which explains the reason for their deletion. Both groups express criticism towards officials; however, they do it in different forms, with the deleted ones being more person-oriented and offensive.

The tasks that were stated in the beginning of the research were completed. All in all, the introduction of visual humor into the cyberspace and the development of users' editing allowed the broader-scale spread of ideas among the most socially active groups of population. Although the images cannot represent the opinions of rural residents, they can be interpreted as representations of a public opinion, and their distribution among the users indicates the users' agreement with the opinions expressed, and therefore visual humorous content should be considered a factor of a separate Internet-based public opinion development, which proves the hypothesis stated in the beginning.

The analysis conducted in the current research has one significant drawback: lack of technical support for the creation of its own sample. Due to inability to track the deleted and popular posts with images online, the author turned to the analysis of already existing compilations, which could not be considered fully representative, as they were gathered by the Western companies.

However, the future development of the topic will allow further research of verbally non-revealed public opinion and to form the patterns and conditions for the deletion, and therefore understand the Chinese system of censorship better.

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