Seminar I Multimodality and Intercultural Communication in Social Media

Considering culture as a fluid and complex construct manifested in and constructed by various social communicative practices that are inherently multimodal requires that we give multimodal resources full analytical attention. Meanwhile, a cultural consciousness is crucial in any critical analysis of multimodal discursive practices. On this premise, I propose three aspects of culture related multimodal analysis:

• Cross-cultural comparison: Understanding the complex multimodal manifestations of cultural differences/similarities by analyzing various types of multimodal discourse;
• Inter-cultural interaction: Understanding the multimodal communication process between participants from different cultural backgrounds;
• Trans-cultural communication: Understanding the hybridity, homogeneity, and heterogeneity of cultural practices in the globalized and digitalized world.

In this talk, I will explain all these dimensions of analysis and then focus on the last one, proposing a method for systematically analyzing identity as transcultural capital that transcends the China-West boundary in social media communication. Through a detailed case study of city branding on TikTok and a Chinese wanghong (cyber celebrity) woman’s identity performance in livestreaming, I will demonstrate how transcultural identity, as an agentic asset, is strategically deployed to achieve various communicative purposes. In particular, I will discuss the exploitation and integration of traditional Chinese and Western postfeminist values in relation to notions like symbolic economy, femininity, and gender politics in China’s complex social media environment.