Make up essay

#PositiveEnergy Douyin: constructing “playful patriotism” in a Chinese short-video application

Xu Chena, D. B. V. Kayea! and J. Zengb

aDigital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; bDepartment of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

In Chinese political discourse, “positive energy” (zheng nengliang) is a popular expression that has embodied mainstream political ideology in China since 2012. This term has also become prominent on Douyin, a prominent Chinese short-video platform. By June 2018, over 500 Chinese governmental accounts on Douyin had promoted positive energy in videos, and the content was viewed over 1.6 billion times. Douyin even created a separate trending section, Positive Energy, for videos that promoted the dominant state ideology. This study argues that the Positive Energy feature on Douyin is significant. The Chinese government has accused and even permanently shut down several digital platforms for spreading “vulgarity” as the antithesis of positive energy. Using the app walkthrough method and a content analysis of over 800 videos collected from the Positive Energy section of Douyin, this study explores how Douyin promotes the Chinese state’s political agenda by promoting a new form of playful patriotism online.

Keywords: short-video; Douyin; China; playful patriotism

Introduction Douyin, a mobile short-video platform, was first released in China in September 2016 by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance. It has recently become one of the most successful short-video platforms in the country. At a curator conference hosted by Douyin in August 2019, the platform’s general manager, Zhang Nan, claimed that the app’s development was “beyond expectations,” as Douyin’s daily active users had reached 320 million (China Daily, 2019). Government support is needed for the success of Chinese Internet companies (Keane & Zhao, 2012), and Chinese information and communication technologies (ICT) are often shaped by techno- nationalist policies (Plantin & Seta, 2019). Although it is not as closely associated with the Chinese government as Baidu, Alibaba, or Tencent (collectively BAT) are, ByteDance reflects the logics of other major Chinese media companies who must balance achieving their commercial goals and fulfilling the political goals of the Chinese state (Zhao, 2008). On Douyin, users feel the presence of the Chinese state through the platform’s promotion of trending #PositiveEnergy videos.

Positive energy (zheng nengliang) has been a popular expression in China’s pol- itical discourse since 2012 (Yang & Tang, 2018). By being “grassroots” in nature, positive energy generates a kind of “transcendental Chinese patriotism” (Du, 2014, p. 5) that differs from mainstream Chinese patriotism as constructed by the state.

!Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

! 2020 The Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Chinese Journal of Communication, 2020 https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2020.1761848

Since 2012, however, the state has effectively appropriated the discourse of posi- tive energy and associated its meaning with “attitudes or emotions that are aligned with the ideological or value systems of the [Chinese Communist Party]” (Yang & Tang, 2018, p. 3). By June 2018, over 500 Chinese governmental accounts on Douyin were promoting positive energy, including governmental institutions and state media, whose videos had collectively received over 1.6 billion views (Zhulan, 2018). To support the state’s exploitation of positive energy, in a symbolically important move, Douyin developed a separate Positive Energy trending section on its platform. The inclusion of this feature, which did not appear in earlier versions of Douyin, is important because it may have been added after a public relations incident in which its parent company ByteDance was sanctioned by China’s media regulator (Ho, 2018).

Similar to other Chinese video platforms, the platform governance of Douyin appears to have followed the state’s Internet regulations (Lin & de Kloet, 2019; Wang & Lobato, 2019). In April 2018, ByteDance was required to permanently shut down Neihanduanzi, a humorous memes application, after it was accused of spreading vulgarity online (Ho, 2018). Previous research has also shown more complex and co-regulatory governance frameworks in Chinese government’s regu- lation of the flagship digital platforms owned by BAT (Hong & Xu, 2019). In con- sidering ByteDance, this study analyses how Douyin encapsulates the values of positive energy into its platform to align with the state’s political agenda. This aim of this study is to offer insights into how a Chinese short-video platform can be a tool for promoting a playful style of patriotism online. This digitally enacted play- ful patriotism reflects the state’s efforts to ally with the cyber-nationalism of Chinese grassroots and induce it to be consistent with the state’s patriotic agenda.

We begin this article by reviewing the short video as a medium for the positive energy phenomenon in China in the past decade. Next, we discuss forms of Chinese patriotism and nationalism as well as our conception of playfulness in the context of short videos. We then describe our methodology, the Douyin applica- tion (Light et al., 2018), and the content analysis (Neuendorf, 2017) of videos sys- tematically collected from Douyin’s Positive Energy trending section. In the findings and discussion section, we present the themes that emerged from our ana- lysis. These themes support our development of playful patriotism, the process through which official accounts and individual users increase the palatability, appeal, and dissemination of patriotic content. We conclude by arguing that the emergence of playful patriotism on the Douyin platform is emblematic of a broader shift in online nationalistic and patriotic discourse in Chinese digital media.

Literature review Short video, Douyin, and positive energy The term short video refers to video content that is shorter than five minutes, often between 15 and 60 seconds, and distributed digitally by platforms such as Douyin and many others. The short video is a relatively new media format. Its features include low-cost production, widely disseminated content, and blurred boundaries between producers and consumers (Kong, 2018). By October 2018, an estimated 648 million users frequented Chinese short-video platforms, such as

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Kuaishou, Meipai, and Douyin (Su, 2019), accounting for almost 80 percent of all Internet users in China (CNNIC, 2019). Short-video content has proven to be a valuable tool for aspiring creators of online content (Mehta & Kaye, 2019).

From its homepage, Douyin allows users to view algorithmically curated short videos in an endless scrolling mode (Elegant, 2019) (Figure 1). Users may also switch to viewing videos on a separate trending page. Trending videos on Douyin are agglomerated by hashtags (Figure 2) or collected in a separate special section on the trending page, which is called Positive Energy (zhengnengliang) (Figure 3). The positive energy page displays specific types of videos that conform to a spe- cific state ideology.

It is important to note that Douyin, like other short-video and digital media platforms in China, are required to adhere to state governance, which “demand[s] a compliant culture” online (Lin & de Kloet, 2019, p. 4). In recent years, the Cyberspace Administration of China (2017) has passed a series of regulations

Figure 1. Douyin’s homepage. Source: Douyin Mobile Platform.

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governing the emerging content production space, which dictate that the content on platforms must conform to official ideologies or face penalties.1

Regarding the specific ideology promoted on Douyin, positive energy has become a widely used key expression in Chinese social and political discourse (Yang & Tang, 2018). Originating in Western positive psychology, earlier itera- tions of the term in China were associated with expressing scientific terminology in lay language and referencing the Chinese folk beliefs of charity, emotionality, and psychology (Yang & Tang 2018, p. 10). Recently, the term positive energy has been used to describe Chinese wellbeing, prosperity, and national strength as part of a broad political narrative of Chinese happiness (Hird, 2018).

The term, positive energy, first appeared in China in the early 2000s (Yang & Tang, 2018) and was popularized during the 2012 London Olympics, which around the same time that the Xi Jinping government came to power (Triggs, 2019). The term is widely used to describe a grassroots movement because of its

Figure 2. Douyin’s trending page. Source: Douyin Mobile Platform.

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seemingly spontaneous emergence in China (Du, 2014). Because positive energy is focused on “societal and moral issues accompanying marketization and undermin- ing Party dominance, the reinforcing of a common duty to resolve such problems in unison with the state, a promotion of active moral behavior, and support for state control of the Internet” (Triggs, 2019, p. 105), it is useful expression in pro- moting Chinese patriotism and nationalism.

State-sponsored patriotism and cyber-nationalism in China Chinese nationalism (minzu zhuyi) is rooted in the nation’s long fight against inva- sions from Western and Japanese imperialist forces since the 1839 Opium War (Harris, 1997). Nationalism has been described as “an undercurrent” that has shaped ‘China’s political landscape in the past century’ (Wu, 2007, p. 73), particu- larly against the backdrop of China’s rising global economic and political

Figure 3. Douyin’s positive energy section. Source: Douyin Mobile Platform.

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influence in recent decades (Cheung, 2012; Harris, 1997). In previous research, the contemporary surge in Chinese nationalism was attributed to governmental cam- paigns, such as the state-led Patriotic Education Campaign beginning in the 1990s (Zhao, 1998, 2004).

Wu (2007, p. 72) differentiated Chinese state-sponsored patriotism (aiguo zhuyi) from Chinese nationalism (minzu zhuyi) as follows: “patriotism refers to one’s love toward one’s state or government, and nationalism refers to one’s feel- ing toward a set of symbols of cultural identity.” Wu (2007) continued, “patriotism and nationalism may concur sometimes, but they may conflict with each other too” (p. 73). Indeed, the ruling state party has never officially endorsed Chinese nationalism (minzu zhuyi) and instead has advocated for a Chinese patri- otism that conflates “love” for the state with the “love” for the Communist Party of China (Zhao, 1998). While the state has constructed state-sponsored patriotism to legitimize its regime (Cheung, 2012; Wu, 2007), a rival ideology, Chinese cyber- nationalism, has emerged on the Chinese Internet over the past 20 years (Gries, 2005; Wu, 2007).

Chinese cyber-nationalism is a bottom-up spontaneous nationalistic sentiment fueled by Internet users’ perceptions of external threats against China (Liu, 2012; Wu, 2007). A distinguishing feature of Chinese cyber-nationalism is its grassroots and disseminating style, which contrasts the state’s traditional forms of top-down patriotic propaganda (Guo & Yang, 2016). For example, in February 2009, Chinese users began to circulate the slogan, “Go! Baobao!”2 (Baobao jiayou!) to support Wen Jiabao, former Premier of China, in response to an anti-China pro- testor who had interrupted Wen’s speech at Cambridge University (Qiu, 2015). Baobao jiayou was spontaneously popularized by Chinese Internet users, which illustrates the light-hearted and humorous language used in expressions of Chinese cyber-nationalism.

Humorous content and memes also play an important role in Chinese cyber- nationalism. Memes are not restricted to one platform or template (Highfield & Tama, 2016). Here we define memes as a form of sharable and remixable visual content spread through imitation and competition among users (Ask & Abidin, 2018; Shifman, 2013). Qiu (2015) noted the rise of “image-driven nationalism” in Chinese Internet discourses, which meant that large amounts of memes were circu- lated in response to Chinese nationalistic events online. The culmination of Chinese nationalistic memes occurred in the 2016 Diba Expedition. On the night of 20 January 2016, thousands of mainland Chinese Internet users in an online group called Diba surged through China’s primary digital censorship apparatus, which is known as the Great Firewall of China (GFW), to bombard Taiwanese pro-independence Facebook pages, such as those of Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing- wen, and the Sanlih News. The coordinated action included posting slogans such as “D8 Goes to Battle, Nothing Will Grow” and other Chinese nationalistic mes- sages and memes, some of which were playful, and others were more aggressive (Guo & Yang, 2016, p. 54). Because Facebook has been banned in mainland China since 2013, the Chinese Internet users had to use virtual private networks (VPN) in their “expedition,” and the entire event was live-streamed on Chinese social media platforms. As a result, the topic Diba Expedition went viral on Chinese social media, demonstrating that playful and memetic Internet culture can become expressions of nationalism (Han, 2019; Wang, 2016).

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Compared with state-sponsored patriotism, another distinguishing feature of Chinese online nationalism is that it often includes expressions of extreme popu- lism (Guo & Yang, 2016). In contrast to state-sponsored patriotism, which aims to legitimize the party-state, bottom-up online nationalistic sentiments might be regarded as destabilizing Chinese society because of its populistic and unpredict- able nature (Han, 2019). Chinese scholars have criticized this populistic national- ism as being parochial nationalism in the disguise of patriotism (Liu, 2016; Zhao, 2007). The patriotic disguise of Chinese cyber-nationalism may stem from the loose usage of the word patriotism in the Chinese language. For example, Liu (2012) interviewed Chinese university student Internet users, who expressed, “the nation is higher and greater than the party-government” online (p. 63). The inter- viewees embraced the idea of aiguo zhuyi (patriotism) in their online expressions, which is literally identical to the word (aiguo zhuyi) used to refer to state-spon- sored patriotism (Liu, 2012). However, Liu found that students’ understanding of aiguo zhuyi differed from the Chinese government’s construction of patriotism, which was more populist and nationalistic.

The Chinese state has addressed the incongruities between Chinese cyber- nationalism and official state-sponsored patriotism (Wang, 2016). However, prior to the 2010s, the Chinese state appeared to be unskilled in harnessing or domesti- cating Chinese cyber-nationalism, as they lacked sufficient understanding of Internet logics and cultures as well as the advanced regulatory technologies that would aid them in their mission of political indoctrination (Plantin & Seta, 2019).

Cultivating the Chinese patriotic internet The advancement of Internet industries in China has been associated with the pol- itical agendas of the “Chinese dream” and “national rejuvenation” (Keane & Chen, 2017), which could be interpreted as the effort of the Chinese government to imbue Chinese technology industries and technology policies, such as renewable energy and ICTs, with techno-nationalism (Kennedy, 2013). Techno-nationalism is the belief that technology is both a crucial element of national security and a vital national asset (Kennedy, 2013). Chinese techno-nationalism is consistent with state-sponsored patriotism, but it is distinguishable from the extremist and popu- list “cyber-nationalism.” To shape a Chinese techno-nationalist Internet, the state has continuously tightened its control through Internet censorship systems (Plantin & Seta, 2019). Many projects, such as the GFW, have been ongoing since the mid-1990s. They have required major financial investments and commitments from designers, architects, and providers to refine the technology (Plantin & Seta, 2019). While the state has led the development of ICT infrastructures, the itera- tions of Chinese Internet applications from web-based portals to mobile platforms have been driven mainly by entrepreneurial innovations.

By the 2010s, regulatory technologies, such as the GFW, had matured signifi- cantly (Plantin & Seta, 2019). However, the development of state strategies for engaging with the Internet went through several phases of transition. First, the Chinese government implemented a structural change in its Internet management, shifting from a model of centralized top-down control to a decentralized and elas- tic model of engagement. Wu (2007, p.109) described this approach as a “composite horizontal-vertical” style of managing the Internet. This governing

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strategy ensured that the state kept a tight grasp on the Internet until the advent of Chinese digital platforms. After China’s major micro-blog service, Weibo, was launched in 2009, the platform quickly became a public space for discussing social issues and political dissidence (Wang, 2013). In response, Chinese authorities took a proactive approach to engaging with Weibo by introducing tens of thousands of governmental accounts. These Weibo accounts are used to propagate official mes- sages to guide public opinion, enhancing the Chinese government’s influence over the micro-blogging sphere (Schlaeger & Jiang, 2014; Sullivan, 2014).

Additionally, the Chinese government has sought to adopt an innovative style of propaganda because the traditional political indoctrination has become incom- patible with the fast-changing Internet culture. Memetic styles of communication have become the most salient in Internet culture among the young Chinese gener- ation (Guo, 2018). The example of the Diba Expedition (Han, 2019) illustrates that memetic communication can be effectively utilized by Chinese cyber-national- ists. Thus, understanding the memetic online culture would aid state social media accounts in effectively exploiting the affordances of digital media to promote a pro-state ideology. As a result, the former grassroots Internet culture is now being adopted by various state institutions. In certain online incidents, such as the Leon Dai incident in 2016, the state’s social media accounts succeeded in using memes to advocate their own style of state-sponsored patriotism and build alliances with nationalist netizens (Guo, 2018).

Although separate from the state’s actors, Chinese netizens have also begun participating in online propagandist discourses in what Repnikova and Fang (2018, p. 765) termed “authoritarian participatory persuasion 2.0” (APP 2.0). APP 2.0 directly engages ordinary users in co-producing persuasive propaganda con- tent. This approach, spurred by President Xi, marks a clear departure from earlier approaches to online propaganda, which were “overt and crude” (Repnikova & Fang, 2018, p. 763) and represented a counterpart to grassroots online resistance against state propaganda.

Douyin provides a useful case study with which to explore the novel state pat- riotism promulgated by APP 2.0 (Repnikova & Fang, 2018). Because of its format and content creation tools, it is a digital tabula rasa for playful creators and state actors. On Douyin, users can easily engage in creating, viewing, and sharing short videos as well as participating in the playful and fluid meme culture. With the introduction of the Positive Energy trending page, state accounts, actors, and pat- riotic users have a unique space to post and share patriotic content in addition to non-patriotic humorous meme content.

As noted above, Douyin features the Positive Energy trending section, which is designed to promote a specific type of patriotic content. To analyze Douyin’s Positive Energy section, we adopted Nieborg and Poell’s (2018) theoretical frame- work of the platformization of cultural production. According to the concept of platformization, the creators of digital platforms develop new approaches and strategies and adapt their digital infrastructures to match changing markets and governance. These digital infrastructures, markets, and governances are mutually articulated and mutually supported (Nieborg & Poell, 2018). In China, the volatile Chinese commercial and political environment has required that platforms adapt digital architectures in accordance with state-imposed platform regulations (Wang & Lobato, 2019). Furthermore, Duffy et al. (2019) called for further investigation into platform practices, which they defined as the “strategies, routines, experiences,

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and expressions of creative labor and citizenship that shape cultural production through platforms” (p. 2). On the Douyin platform, the practices involve creating, viewing, and sharing short videos and participating in the playful and fluid Internet culture. On the Positive Energy trending page, state actors, as well as ordinary users, participate by viewing, promoting, and interacting with content that is aligned with the agenda of Chinese statecraft.

We argue that Douyin’s inclusion of the Positive Energy section fosters the platformization of political indoctrination by applying the cultural logics of the Chinese Internet. Douyin’s Positive Energy section is unlikely to be a state-run project. The platform is one of ByteDance’s core commercial products that derives its value from user innovation and serves the Chinese social media entertainment market; it was not designed to be a state-controlled propaganda machine. However, by adding a dedicated Positive Energy section, Douyin could be a powerful tool in promoting state-sponsored patriotism through playful short vid- eos and its platform practices. Hence, this study addresses the following question: How does the platformization of positive energy in playful short videos reinforce Chinese patriotism?

Methodology We employ the app walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018) and content analysis (Neuendorf, 2017) to investigate how Douyin is used as a tool to reinforce state- sponsored patriotism. We began this study by collecting data using the app walk- through method, which is “a way of engaging directly with an app’s interface to examine its technological mechanisms and embedded cultural references to under- stand how it guides users and shapes their experiences” (Light et al., 2018, p. 882). Recent studies have employed this method to study the Chinese platforms iQiyi (Wang & Lobato, 2019) and Kuaishou (Lin & de Kloet, 2019). We conducted multiple walkthroughs of Douyin in August 2019, and we systematically identified Douyin’s features for creating, sharing, and interacting with content. We also identified structures related to Douyin’s app governance, which is hard-coded in certain features and formally articulated through the terms of service (ToS).

Next, we conducted a content analysis of the videos collected from Douyin’s Positive Energy section, which is publicly available for viewing, and, in certain cases, it can be downloaded without signing into a Douyin account. Between 29 August and 7 October 2019, we manually collected 800 videos and their associated metadata, such as captions, publishers, and view count by taking screenshots and downloading the top 25 Positive Energy videos each day. Unlike the videos dis- played on the highly personalized endless scrolling portal, trending and positive energy videos are not influenced by user preference or location. We collected 20 videos that appeared in the Positive Energy category at each moment of collection. To minimize algorithmic bias, we collected all the videos in our sample without signing into an account on Douyin. Because our video data were collected during the 2019 Hong Kong protests leading up to the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, the results of the content analysis offer insights into Douyin’s construction of patriotic discourse during politically significant events. However, in the conclusion, we also address this historical moment because it is a source of bias.

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The 800 videos in our dataset were published by 275 unique accounts. We delineated these accounts into five categories: government agencies, educational institutions, state media, commercial media, and individual accounts. Two coders manually categorized the accounts, and we calculated Cohen’s Kappa based on a random sample of 20% to measure the intercoder reliability (j¼ 0.78), which indi- cated substantial agreement between two coders. Informed by our initial walk- through findings, we then conducted a thematic analysis of the content of the short videos. We employed multi-step coding to identify themes in a subset of our total sample. We randomly sampled 500 videos in the Positive Energy section for thematic coding. In the first stage, we attached labels to each video to denote its theme. In the second step, we organized the labels in higher thematic categories. These non-exclusive themes and sub-themes were the basis of our code book. We again calculated intercoder reliability between the two coders using Cohen’s Kappa (j¼ 0.81).

Findings and discussion The data analysis proceeded in two phases. First, in our walkthrough, we identi- fied four ways in which Douyin promoted positive energy through its features and app governance. First, the promotion of Chinese socialism is explicitly stated in Douyin’s ToS. Second, as noted above, positive energy is hard-coded in Douyin’s features, mainly in the Positive Energy trending section. Third, the positive energy content is facilitated by Douyin’s tight content monitoring, which relies on a vast dedicated team of monitors as well as ByteDance’s proprietary algorithm, which curates trending hashtags and content. Fourth, we noted that the positive energy content in state media accounts on Douyin were promoted by the platform.

Our walkthrough methodology and content analysis revealed that the content posted by state media accounts on Douyin clearly deviated from their posts on other platforms and in traditional media. As we noted above, positive energy has been used explicitly by the state on Chinese social media to promote its ideology (Triggs, 2019; Yang & Tang, 2018). These previous studies were focused on the state’s construction of the positive energy discourse on traditional social media, such as Weibo. Previous research examined the empowerment of (disadvantaged) individuals through short-video platforms (Li et al., 2019), but few studies have considered how these short-video platforms could potentially be appropriated by the state. In examining how Douyin constructs patriotism through short videos, we first consider how the platform governance and features of Douyin, framed by platformization (Nieborg & Poell, 2018), support patriotism. Second, we describe how patriotism is constructed through playful positive energy videos, and finally we discuss the role of playfulness in platformed Chinese patriotism.

Platform governance and features Based on the findings of our walkthrough, Chinese patriotism is supported and facilitated by Douyin’s infrastructure and platform governance, specifically the Positive Energy trending page. We found no publicly available data regarding exactly when the Positive Energy feature was added to Douyin. However, our examination of the archive of Douyin’s update logs, revealed that the Positive

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Energy section was not a feature of the platform when it was first launched. The addition of this feature might be related to the shutdown of ByteDance’s app, Neihanduanzi, in April 2018 because of its vulgarity. This event forced ByteDance to consider how it could be better aligned with the state’s dominant ideology. After Neihanduanzi was shut down, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming published an extensive letter of apology,3 vowing to promote core socialist values in ByteDance’s products. Moreover, Douyin’s general manager Zhang Nan explicitly stated that Douyin should imbue the platform with positive energy. This shift highlights Douyin’s efforts to balance its commercial pursuits and the Chinese state’s interventions. If ByteDance were to completely revamp the platform replete with positive energy videos, they could risk the loss of their user base. In response to the state’s warning, ByteDance may have inadvertently, or perhaps intention- ally, transformed Douyin into a digital enclave for the state to promote its positive energy brand of patriotism.

Furthermore, platform governance on apps is “often enacted through formal ToS documents and informally by encouraging users to behave in ways that align with the norms of the ideal forms of user” at whom the app is targeted (Light et al., 2018, p. 890). Douyin’s ToS state that content “undermining the regime, overthrowing the socialist system, inciting secessionism, and subverting the unifica- tion of the country” is forbidden on the platform (Douyin, 2019, p. 1).

Hence, Douyin formally stated that content posted on the platform should be aligned with the core socialist values in China. We acknowledge that Douyin does not force its users to agree to create videos that promote core socialist values; nowhere on the platform or in Douyin’s ToS is it mentioned that users should post positive energy videos. Nevertheless, the volume of videos posted in the Positive Energy section from a variety of state and individual accounts, many with millions of views, clearly suggests to users the types of content creation that Douyin deems positive.

Positive energy videos In our analysis, we found two strategies through which content was posted in Douyin’s Positive Energy section. First, based on our categorization of Douyin accounts in our dataset (Table 1), we determined that Chinese governmental accounts were the main providers of positive energy videos. These included all accounts related to state institutions, including state media accounts (e.g., People’s Daily), government agencies, and official groups (e.g., Communist Youth League of China). As shown in Table 1, the majority of videos in the Positive Energy

Table 1. Account categories, video count and view count from sample (n¼ 800).

Accounts count

Video count

Avg. view count

Governmental accounts State media 95 397 1,689,544 State institutions 56 107 1,225,643

Educational institution accounts 2 4 803,750 Commercial institution accounts 14 47 1,011,117 Individual accounts 107 245 1,099,656

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section were published by state media or state institutions. Of the 274 accounts, 151 (55%) were affiliated with the Chinese government, which accounted for 504 (63%) of the 800 videos in the sample. Furthermore, the average view count in state media accounts was higher than in individual accounts, commercial accounts, and educational accounts. These governmental accounts were relatively new on Douyin, but they had been highly active in other Chinese social media (i.e., Weibo) in the promotion of Chinese patriotism (Guo, 2018).

We also found governmental accounts that were native to short-video plat- forms. For example, Young Video (xiaoyang shipin), which was affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV), posted 77 (9.6%) videos during our data collec- tion. Young Video is a state-sponsored content creator dedicated to creating and distributing content on short-video platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin. The findings of the content analysis indicated consistency in the way that governmental accounts promoted and constructed ideology on Douyin, which were similar to the state-sponsored patriotism that conflates the love of country with the love of the party-state (Zhao, 1998). We found that videos posted by governmental accounts and featured in the Positive Energy section were primarily designed to promote patriotism. Videos posted by individual or commercial accounts in the Positive Energy section also depicted the dominant ideology.

The second strategy used to shape positive energy was to ensure that the themes of videos posted to the eponymous trending tab were consistent and com- prehensive. Generally, the themes of the videos in Douyin’s Positive Energy sec- tion fell into two major categories: the positive representation of the nation at the macro level and the positive representation of the people at the micro level. Beyond these two broad thematic groups, we categorized positive energy videos into seven non-mutually exclusive sub-themes based on the subsample of 500 vid- eos coded (Table 2).

The macro-level construction of patriotism was evident in videos showing Chinese military forces, support for the Hong Kong police, and celebrations of the 70th anniversary of China. Videos featuring the macro-level construction of patri- otism fostered national pride. These videos focused on depicting national prosper- ity and advancement by introducing high-tech projects, such as space flight projects, 5G mobile networks, and nuclear power plants. These videos also con- veyed a playful tone that imbued serious and technological content with funny

Table 2. Positive energy video themes.

Theme Video count Percentage Avg view count

Macro-level Construction of Patriotism

The people’s liberation army and police force

125 25% 1,253,891

70th Anniversary of PRC

115 23% 1,992,979

National prosperity and advance

65 13% 1,692,252

Hong Kong protests 29 6% 1,426,323 Micro-level

Construction of Harmony

Social role models 343 69% 1,293,231 Family harmony 55 11% 1,072,054

Other 24 5% 1,304,929

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and cheerful elements. With light-hearted background music and playful video edits, national pride was embedded in many captions, such as “Thumbs up for Chinese projects!” and “1958, China ended its history of relying on importing pen- icillin!” The micro-level construction of harmony among individuals was featured in videos that promoted filial piety (i.e., responsibility for one’s family), sibling love and role models (e.g., scientists and devoted labor workers). Social role mod- els were the most recurrent theme, which was portrayed videos that featured both elite role models (e.g., top scientists, mechanics, and doctors) and everyday grass- roots role models (e.g., delivery couriers, cleaners, and bus drivers).4 The videos in this category linked individuals’ dedication and success to the harmony and advancement of the country. The videos often associated the achievements of elite role models with the achievements of the nation. For example, a video featuring a welder at the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant working on an important and danger- ous piece of machinery was repetitively posted for 13 days (Figure 4). This video was posted by the account “The artisan of the great nation” (daguo gongjiang),

Figure 4. Artisan welder at the Tianwan nuclear plant. Source: Douyin Mobile Platform.

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which was another CCTV project. In these types of videos, being an elite role model means devoting oneself to building the country. One will be admired for contributing to the country’s social, economic, and technological development.

The videos depicting grassroots role models promoted ordinary altruism that contributed to the stability and harmony of Chinese society. These videos were posted both by state media accounts and individual user accounts. The role mod- els in these videos included manual laborers, such as public janitors. In our sam- ple, we found one video that featured a public janitor cleaning a playground. This video was created by an individual account that was featured on Positive Energy on 10 different days. This video was titled, “Pay our respect to those lovely peo- ple. Because of you, our city is becoming better. #The loveliest people #pay respect to public janitors” (Figure 5). Like many other short videos on Douyin, the plot of this video is evident in its title.

Figure 5. Paying respect to public janitors. Source: Douyin Mobile Platform.

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The grassroots role model was portrayed by individuals in unexpected areas. In our coded sample, we found six videos that featured food delivery couriers, one of which was posted for three consecutive days in the Positive Energy section. This video was posted by Huacheng þ, a Douyin account affiliated with the Guangzhou government and titled “#HuachengPositiveEnergy” with the caption, “a delivery courier brother was delivering food in the typhoon weather, and cleaned sewage on his way, his hands were soaked into pale. @Douyin Assistant.” Several videos based on the grassroots role model challenged the impression of Douyin’s “middle-classed sensitivities” (Li et al., 2019, p. 9). These videos depicted the proletarian sensibilities of the Chinese communist regime, whose endorsement of grassroots role models is helpful in constructing the patriotic sentiments among everyday citizens and is therefore important in legitimizing the state regime.

According to Douyin’s general manager, Zhang Nan, the aim of promoting positive energy is to align the platform’s ideology with core socialist values. The term core socialist values was first mentioned by former Chinese president Hu Jintao, including “prosperity, democracy, civility, and harmony at the national level; freedom, equality, justice, and rule of law as societal values, and patriotism, dedication, integrity, and geniality as citizens’ concerns” (Gow, 2017, p. 99). Our findings suggest that Douyin has its own reasons for promoting core socialist val- ues in the Positive Energy section. Among all the videos we analyzed, none expli- citly fit the theme of promoting democracy. Instead, the videos were focused on promoting harmony and patriotism at both macro and micro levels. In Chinese Confucian culture, supported by the state, the nation is often viewed as an extended family. The harmony of the family (jia) and the strength of the nation (guo) are closely related concepts (Wang, 2019). We therefore argue that the videos in the Positive Energy section promoting micro-level harmony also contributed to the macro-level construction of patriotism.

Playful patriotism Based on the foregoing discussion of our findings on the Positive Energy section, we propose the term playful patriotism to describe how the Chinese state is trans- forming its approach to disseminating propaganda online. We define playful patri- otism as state-endorsed but not necessarily orchestrated, light-hearted, or amusing media content that promotes the established state ideology, which in this case is positive energy.

We specifically employ the word playful, as playfulness connotes a light- hearted tone and something that is intended for amusement rather than to be taken seriously (OED, 2019). As discussed above, our findings showed that play- fully patriotic content was posted by both individual and state media accounts. We argue that this content, which was selected and distributed by Douyin in the Positive Energy section, was distinct from previously reported norms of Chinese cyber-nationalism (Liu, 2012; Wu, 2007). Our findings suggest that the videos in Douyin’s Positive Energy section, posted by both state actors and individuals, approached serious topics in an unserious manner. Furthermore, our findings sug- gest that the content created by state accounts was more playful compared with the state’s political indoctrination efforts in the pre-digital media era and subse- quently in governmental web-based portals.

Chinese Journal of Communication 15

We perceive most content in the Positive Energy section to be patriotic because, as discussed above, patriotism has been a key concept in defining positive energy in China (Triggs, 2019; Yang & Tang, 2018). Importantly, we do not sug- gest that all videos posted by state accounts on Douyin exemplify playful patriot- ism. However, we do suggest that the Positive Energy section was deployed as a vehicle to promote playful patriotism. Our findings showed that 95% of the videos coded from the Positive Energy section directly or indirectly promoted either macro-level or micro-level constructions of patriotism.

The themes we developed through our analysis were not surprising regarding the ideological messages used to construct patriotism on Douyin. The positive energy videos took several forms, and the ways in which they supported patriotism were not always apparent. However, the tone of the content was consistent. Douyin is a playful platform. If the positive energy section were filled with serious, traditional patriotic content, it would be a jarring departure from other content found on the main trending page or homepage. Through creating light-hearted patriotic content, the videos in the Positive Energy section fit the overall playful culture constructed on Douyin.

Furthermore, through posting playful patriotic content, the state could take advantage of the power and spreadability of memes. After all, memes are pliable, and they can assume lives of their own long after their original creation (Katz & Shifman, 2017). Meme content has also been shown to be a useful medium in promulgating image-driven nationalism in China (Qiu, 2015). If the messages encoded in positive energy videos aim to encourage patriotism, playful meme con- tent is the obvious choice by the Douyin platform. Our findings indicate that state actors have learned to adjust the packaging of their messages to suit Douyin’s platform practices. As noted, some content posted by state accounts to Douyin was quite different in tone from the content they published in other media. By learning to play by Douyin’s rules, state actors may appeal to young markets and audiences that would be hard to reach using traditional patriotic content.

Playful content could also potentially ameliorate sensitive or controversial topics in Chinese media. As we noted, the period of our sample collection coin- cided with a tense moment in the Chinese government during the mid to late 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill protests (BBC News, 2019). In our sample, we observed several videos that presented soldiers acting silly or others depicting unusual or everyday actions. One popular video, for example, showed a group of soldiers enthusiastically cheering for the National Volleyball Team during the par- ade of the 70th anniversary of the PRC. The image of soldiers cheering from the sidelines was in sharp contrasted to their usual serious portrayal in Chinese media. Hence, the playful presentation of the Chinese military offers another avenue for state media to combat conflicting narratives within China or in inter- national media.

Playful patriotism is not state public relations. As our findings showed, popu- lar playful patriotism content can be replicated, imitated, or even originated by individual users or non-state accounts. Because of the market in which the Douyin platform operates, our findings suggest that some individuals and organizations post content to Positive Energy because of their patriotism (Wu, 2007). These feel- ings of national pride and patriotism are not unique to Chinese citizens; however, Douyin provides a special digital space for Chinese users to playfully express nationalist sentiments.

16 Xu Chen et al.

Conclusion Over the past 20years, Chinese patriotism and nationalism expressed online have moved through several iterations from the digitalized traditional state-sponsored patri- otism carried over from the pre-Internet era and the undercurrent of radical populist cyber-nationalism circulated by independent Internet-savvy cyber-patriots to the uto- pian techno-nationalism that promotes Chinese technological superiority as the path- way to future prosperity. Playful patriotism represents a new variant that combines the discourse of state-sponsored patriotism with the savviness of cyber-nationalism, which aligns well with future-oriented techno-nationalism. The inclusion of the Positive Energy trending section offers the potential to transform Douyin from a purely mobile media entertainment short-video platform to a patriotic Chinese online space similar to the state’s earlier harnessing of Weibo (Zheng, 2013). This study thus contributes to the knowledge of how mobile entertainment technologies can be used to reinforce social norms and structures in China. Our study also contributes to the growing body of literature on Chinese digital platforms by defining playful patriotism as a construct that can be used in further analyses of Chinese platforms and short vid- eos online. Finally, this study contributes to advancing a clear conception of Chinese patriotism online. Chinese cyber-nationalism has been found to promote patriotism outside Chinese borders, such as in the Diba Incident (Liu, 2012). However, the play- ful patriotism depicted in Douyin’s Positive Energy section promotes a much more internally focused patriotism to support the legitimacy of the Chinese government. Future studies should continue to explore the distinctions between internal and exter- nal manifestations of patriotism online.

The findings of this study shed light on the state’s attempts to platformize authoritarian participatory persuasion 2.0 (Nieborg & Poell, 2018; Repnikova & Fang, 2018) in China. Instead of an overt propagandist strategy, Douyin’s con- struction of playful patriotism could be considered ByteDance’s survival tactic and the camouflage of the actual purpose of the platform. As a commercial enterprise, Bytedance does not intend to challenge state regulators. It focuses on playful con- tent to generate profit. Even so, like other Chinese media companies before it (Zhao, 2008), ByteDance must comply with a state that is fixated on promoting patriotism to ensure social stability and the legitimacy of its regime (Wu, 2007). Following the closure of Neihanduanzi, the addition of the Positive Energy section on Douyin could be perceived as a a clear signal that ByteDance is willing to make creative compromises with the state as long as they do not alter the fabric of Douyin. However, the affordances of popular Chinese social media are not necessarily designed by the state; instead, the state also needs to learn the logics of radically evolved digital media to engage with digital platforms to achieve political ends. As a predominately mobile app, playful patriotism signifies the state’s advancements in using audio-visual media and the meme cultures afforded by Douyin to effectively engage with Chinese netizens by posting short videos.

We must acknowledge that our findings should be interpreted within the unique historical context during which our data were collected. Because of the lim- ited time available, our data set was collected during two historic events: the 70th anniversary of the CCP and the 2019 Hong Kong Protests. Moreover, it was not possible to collect archival videos made earlier in 2019. Future studies may repli- cate our methodology in different context to investigate the persistence of playful patriotism on the Douyin platform.

Chinese Journal of Communication 17

Future research on Chinese platform practices and platformization should con- sider further manifestations of playful patriotism. Even on platforms that do not include a section on positive energy, there may be opportunities for the Chinese state to incorporate its novel approaches to propaganda in the form of playful patriotism. Recent studies (e.g., Duffy et al., 2019) showed that platform practices are rapidly evolving in China. The programmatic content on certain platforms has become depersonalized and homogenous (Wang & Lobato, 2019). Furthermore, individual creators of content are finding ways to use the unique affordances, mar- kets, and governance of Chinese platforms to achieve success (Lin & de Kloet, 2019). As the findings of the present study showed, technology companies such as ByteDance are learning to appease the state by adding features like Positive Energy to their platforms. Further explorations of the Chinese state’s shifting strategies to harness the disruptive power of platforms could help disentangle the unique and contradictory logics of Chinese digital spaces, such as the Douyin plat- form, which appear to be increasingly patriotic, albeit playfully so.

Notes 1. For a broader discussion of short-video regulation, see Lin and de Kloet (2019). 2. Baobao (baby in English) is Wen Jiabao’s nickname. 3. See Zhang Yiming’s (2018, April 11) letter of apology (in Chinese), which was posted

on Toutiao. https://www.toutiao.com/a1597389902009351. 4. We acknowledge the problematic nature of using dichotomous language such as

“elites” and “grassroots.” However, in line with previous scholars, we note that these terms are included based solely on their prevalence in Chinese discourse online (See Lin & de Kloet, 2019, footnote 5).

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors Xu Chen is a PhD candidate in the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology. Xu’s PhD project examines the Australian Chinese diaspora’s engagement with the dating apps Tinder and Tantan, focusing on the interplay between digital platforms and diasporic identities.

D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye is an editorial assistant for the Media Industries Journal and a PhD candidate in the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology. His research interests include digital music, cultural policy, copyright, and platform studies.

Dr. Jing Zeng is a senior research associate in the science communication division in the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ), University of Zurich. Her research interests include digital culture, misinformation, and online activism.

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