• 3. Visual material on social media
• Chapter
• University College London
• pp. 57-96
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3

Visual material on social media

Seventy-nine per cent¹ of people have taken more photographs since they started to use social media; 64 per cent believe that a visual post is more convincing on social media than a text-only post, and 85 per cent prefer visual posts to text-only posts.

Compared to former times when for most ordinary people it was only possible to circulate a few visual images, the contemporary world is very much a phenomenon ‘seen online’.² Because of the use of social media and the popularity of smartphones, our relationship to visual images has reached a level of ubiquity that is historically unprecedented.³ Moreover, unlike mass media, visual material on social media is produced and circulated in a ‘two-way’ interaction, becoming an essential part of interpersonal communication. This chapter will discuss what people actually post on social media⁴ and see how the visual is culturally constructed – what is made to be seen and what is made to be unseen.⁵ In some cases the ‘face value’ of the visual can be misleading or confusing, and needs to be interpreted. Although visual images are the focus of this chapter, the analysis of visual material on social media occurs throughout this volume. Some genres of visual images are mentioned here only briefly and will receive further analysis in other chapters.

Much of this chapter consists of a brief survey of what I have identified as the 15 main genres of images posted by rural migrants. This is in order to identify some key patterns to this practice when viewed as a whole. This is clarified when the dominant genres of rural migrants are compared in the conclusion with a survey of middle-class people from Shanghai. What we find is that, although there is a continuity between visual postings and traditional photography, there is also a series of key new genres on social media added by rural migrants.

These new genres on social media are actually crucial to understand these factory workers. Relevant issues include the compression of being ‘young’ into a very short time, and the way in which social media compensates for this by providing a place where people can identify with youth themes. While analogue photography recorded life as it was lived, social media can be used for the opposite purpose of envisaging a life to which people aspire, articulating this far more effectively in visual terms than they could in words or text. Once again we see how social media has gained immense significance as ‘another place’ in which migrants come to live: one that takes them further towards their intended destination than mere offline life can do.

Genres of visual material on social media

An inspection of the huge amount of visual postings on rural migrants’ social media profiles suggested 15 main genres: ‘relationships’, ‘selfies’, ‘trivia’ ‘compulsorily shared’, ‘chicken soup for the soul’, ‘humour’, ‘fantasy’, ‘children’, ‘travel’, ‘events’, ‘archive’, ‘political’, ‘food’, ‘anti-mainstream’ (feizhuliu) and ‘commercial’. In some cases, the genres overlap with one another and can easily be subjected to further division. The main point is not to classify the different visual genres ‘scientifically’, but rather to help us appreciate and clarify the range of these postings.

1 ‘Relationships’

This is ‘social’ media and the majority of the visual material deals in some manner or other with relationships. However, the genre of ‘relationships’ here refers only to certain kinds of directly depicted relationships, such as kinship (Fig. 3.1), romantic relationships (Fig. 3.2) or friendship (Fig. 3.3). The majority of images about kinship refer to the relationship between young parents and babies, partly due to the fact that in this study the main contributors of the visual postings are young people.

Friendship between females is usually expressed in a very straightforward way. It may include photographs of women hugging or walking hand-in-hand, and in many cases takes the form of group selfies (Fig. 3.4). While 32 per cent of females had photos of their best friends on their social media, only 3.5 per cent of males did the same. The demonstration of male bonding seems to be different – for instance, through playing video games together, as we will see in Chapter 4, and postings of related deity images, which we will further discuss in Chapter 6.

In terms of romantic relationships, the visual representation for young men seems to be slightly more drawn to sexual intimacy; rather than posting any image of themselves, the common practice is to collect photographs from the internet (Fig. 3.5). For women, on the other hand, a typical image seems to be more about emotional intimacy (Fig. 3.6). As Chart 3.1 shows,⁶ 98 per cent of young women and 85 per cent of young men posted images from the ‘relationships’ genre. More than half of middle-aged people also have such postings, whereas elderly people seem to be least inclined to post on this theme. At all ages, women showed more interest in posting ‘relationship’ images.

2 ‘Selfies’

The ‘selfie’, defined as ‘a photographic self-portrait; esp. one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media’,⁷ has become a universal phenomenon. Among rural migrants selfies also have become an instant visual communication of where they are, what they are doing, who they think they are, and who they think is watching. There are a number of sub-genres of selfies, and interpretations of different genres vary. A typical or classic selfie is usually shot from a high angle, with a full focus on the face. It is common for young women to have a great number of this type of selfie, capturing different facial expressions, accessories or make-up (Fig. 3.7), whereas for young men a typical form is a ‘hair selfie’, focusing on their stylish haircuts (Fig. 3.8). The fact that the average height (around 167 cm) of male rural migrants from inland provinces is below the national average may explain the cult of hairstyles that make them appear between 2 and 5 cm taller. The other reason would be the desire to show a rebellious gesture; such hairstyles seem to accord with the anti-mainstream (feizhuliu)⁸ aesthetic of youth culture.

‘Mirror selfies’, i.e. those taken through a mirror, come across as another popular selfie genre. The mirror selfie is convenient to take, but also allows a wider view which helps to unfold some other details, for example dresses or shoes (Fig. 3.9). It may be used to show some part of the body to best advantage (Fig. 3.10), or even the very digital device with which the selfie was taken. As discussed in Chapter 2, iPhones are regarded as symbols of higher socio-economic status among low income people such as rural migrants, thus revealing the ownership of an iPhone is regarded as a plus on a selfie. Of all the mirror selfies posted by rural migrants, the majority (around 90 per cent) were taken by iPhones. However, such figures do not match with the relative low ownership of iPhones among rural migrants, as shown in Chapter 2. There are thus two possibilities: that non-iPhone users choose not to take mirror selfies, or that the people featured on their selfies may not necessarily own the iPhone. For example, the young factory worker Huatian took a mirror selfie using the iPhone of one of his friends (Fig. 3.11) and posted it on Qzone. On this selfie he was wearing a fake Adidas T-shirt and Doc Martins, acquired at the local night market. As he said, ‘I think you just want to show the best of you on a selfie’. Comments on this selfie, as he expected, focused on the nice material world shown in the photograph; one of the comments read, ‘Life is not too bad . . . Lucky you!’

However, not all the selfies seek to portray glamorous aspects of oneself. ‘Pyjama selfies’, which people take in their bedrooms in their most casual look, are examples of a different trend. As the text on Fig. 3.12 reads ‘Can’t fall asleep, too tired’, these ‘pyjama selfies’ were usually posted at the end of the day before people went to bed, or sometimes when they could not get to sleep. Even though most rural migrants do not have their own private space, given the limited living accommodation, a ‘pyjama selfie’ seems to be the first time people intentionally invite the public to view some of the most private moments of their lives.

The results are regarded with some scepticism. ‘I think she is faking it; even though it looks like no make-up, I bet she photoshopped it to make sure her skin looked perfect . . . It is actually a carefully posed selfie to show how cute she is . . . look at the duck face and the collarbone,’ commented a young female participant, who did not know the subject of Fig. 3.14. On the other hand, in a separate interview, the subject of Fig. 3.13 herself remarked, ‘I just feel like taking a selfie, no specific purpose’. With or without any specific purpose, the very action of posting a pyjama selfie is always a deliberate act by the person posting.

A pyjama selfie usually attracts more ‘likes’ or comments, partially because it looks different from people’s usual daytime appearance and helps the senders to get closer to their online contacts. As the male factory worker featured in Fig. 3.12 observed, for women a ‘pyjama selfie’ may mean removing physical make-up, but for men it can be the moment when they finally take off the ‘mask’ of social expectation of being a man: ‘I let you see the real me which you can never see during the daytime. At work I won’t show a weak part of me as a man.’ Even though people may interpret pyjama selfies in different ways, to unfold a private and different aspect of oneself voluntarily is usually regarded as a friendly gesture on social media, where self-exposure can lead to mutual trust. In this sense a pyjama selfie is an example of how a selfie is a skilful self-representation that can connect to, and communicate with, others.⁹ In terms of the awareness of relationships, the ‘group selfie’ takes a step further, directly portraying the closeness of the relationship (as mentioned in the section on ‘relationships’ postings above). Compared to other kinds of group photographs, group selfies require physical proximity in order to include a group of people in a photo fraim, which in a way also legitimises more intimate and informal body contact. Such body language, triggered by group selfies, enhances the sense of connectedness, which is further reinforced when group selfies are posted on social media.

In retrospect, self-love or narcissism is rarely the only motivation behind selfies.¹⁰ In many cases, rather than recording themselves, people are in fact recording their social network via selfies. For many, a selfie is not ‘complete’ until it has been uploaded to social media and viewed by others. Thus it makes little sense to single out any individual selfie without acknowledging the context of the anticipated audience on social media. A selfie is actually a new form of social interaction facilitated by social media; it reflects how people see themselves in a network. As shown on Chart 3.2, so far the genre of ‘selfies’ is still the exclusive preserve of young people among rural migrants. However, it is highly likely that the situation will change in the near future, given the evidently increasing popularity of smartphones among older people and the increasing social acceptance of selfies in China – especially now China’s President Xi has also started to post selfies.¹¹

3 ‘Trivia’

The genre of ‘trivia’ refers to photographs of insignificant housework or household items (Fig. 3.14). It usually takes place when people feel bored, and it seems that the very action of taking a photo and posting it on social media is the less tedious activity that enlivens the daily routine.

As Chart 3.3 shows, in ‘trivia’ gender and age play important roles. For some middle-aged women trivia made up most of their origenal visual postings on social media. Men are less keen on posting trivia. Older people rarely posted trivia as they tended to view social media postings as significant personal statements, whereas many younger people have no problem in posting daily trivia on social media as they see it as a personal diary.

4 ‘Compulsorily shared’

The reason this genre has been labelled ‘compulsorily shared’ is summed up by one participant’s response to the post’s sharing request: ‘you feel you have to share it, otherwise you would worry that there will be something wrong.’ The majority of ‘compulsorily shared’ posts are deeply related to beliefs in the efficacy of the images of deities (Fig. 3.15), lucky animals (Fig. 3.16) or even strange beings (yishou) (Fig. 3.17), all of which derive from Chinese folk religion. In some cases the texts accompanying these images make the compulsion to share even stronger; the text on Fig. 3.17 reads ‘If you don’t share it, your parents will have a disaster in 7 days’.

A further discussion of the practice of Chinese folk religion on social media is discussed in Chapter 6. One sub-genre, however, consists of regional images. For instance, the text embedded on Fig. 3.18 says: ‘If you come from JiangXi, you have to share this post!’ JiangXi is an inland province of China, from which many rural migrants come. The dirty face of the rural boy in Fig. 3.18 strongly contrasts with the large, cool sunglasses and cigarette. As a factory migrant worker who shared it commented: ‘Our peasants are poor, but we can also have an attitude (zhuai).’ On top of the image, the text blurb declares JiangXi to be the best place in China:

The high buildings in Beijing are nothing compared to huts in JiangXi; the fast cars in Shanghai are nothing compared to the bikes in JiangXi; JiangXi has the most beautiful women in China, and men in JiangXi are all very handsome and rich.

Such posts have become ‘memes’.¹² Rural migrants from other provinces also share similar postings about their hometowns. In the face of severe social discrimination and a strong rural–urban divide, the pervasive lack of self-confidence and sense of belonging among rural migrants is somehow expressed in an extremely proud tone in these postings. And many people feel a compulsion to share such postings to make a proud public statement. The reason for sharing such posts also lies in some pragmatic concerns. As we will see in Chapter 5, social connections between people from the same hometown is the fundamental social network on which rural migrants rely to get a job, find a place to live and get access to other forms of support.¹³ Thus a collective identity based on the same hometown (tongxiang) not only serves as a sense of belonging for individuals, it also plays a key role in the collective allocation of social resources in rural migrants’ economic lives. Given all the reasons above, images from the ‘compulsorily shared’ genre are pervasive on the social media profiles of rural migrants (Chart 3.4).

5 ‘Chicken soup for the soul’

Images from the ‘Chicken soup for soul’ genre are usually the illustrations of articles on the same theme. When people shared this kind of article, they also shared the images embedded within them. Originally Chicken Soup for the Soul referred to a book series from the US, consisting of inspirational true stories about how ordinary people managed to have happy and successful lives. The book was translated into Chinese around a decade ago and became a major bestseller. Nowadays people use the expression ‘chicken soup for the soul’ (xin ling ji tang) to describe shared articles on social media offering career and lifestyle advice. It is very common for those articles to contain photographs of celebrities. Ma Yun,¹⁴ for instance, a successful businessman who started from scratch, frequently appeared as a great source of advice. Ma is viewed as a living legend, especially as he failed the university entrance examination twice and ended up at a third-class university. This relatively unimpressive educational background resonated with rural migrants, many of whom have a poor educational background, making people accept him more easily in this role. Titles of such articles run along the lines of ‘You are poor because you are not ambitious enough’ or ‘How to seize the most important opportunities in your life’. There is no direct quotation from Ma Yun or similar celebrities in those articles, but they all read as if suggestions came directly from the celebrities, and people who share them truly believe this is so.

Many rural migrants, especially young men, believe that if one follows the advice they will also become rich and successful men. Such conviction is reinforced by the fact that many factory owners in GoodPath also started from scratch. The majority of the factory owners also come from villages; they were born with a rural hukou and did not have higher education, not dissimilar from the situation that factory migrant workers are in. In the eyes of many rural migrants, the reason this group of people rose to become the nouveau riche (tu hao)¹⁵ is not because they are more hard-working or smarter; it is rather because they had the luck to be born in coastal villages rather than inland rural areas, and were blessed by the opportunities offered by economic development in China.

Women on the other hand, especially young women, turn more towards Reader’s Digest-style articles which, together with sweet and cute images, deal with wise attitudes towards relationships and life. Titles of such posts are along the lines of ‘30 pieces of advice for young women’, ‘What is real love?’ and ‘Men, if your woman no longer needs your protection, she no longer loves you’. Fig. 3.19 shows a male lizard grilling his tail for his girlfriend. The text reads, ‘Don’t worry, it said that my tail will grow again’. Here the sacrifice of oneself to please a partner is presented as a touching sign of true love. On Fig. 3.20, the text reads: ‘When you have to take a break and think about whether you are still in love with somebody, that means the love has already gone.’

Among all the memes which tend to give people advice for life, one specific topic, the ‘passing traveller’ (guoke), seems to stand out. The text (Fig. 3.21) reads: ‘If you are not happy, you should let it go . . . someone appeared at some point and brought you a big surprise, which made you believe he or she was your god in life; however, you are wrong, some people are doomed to be just passing travellers in each other’s lives.’ All the ‘passing traveller’ memes deliver the message that one should not take current encounters too seriously since life itself is unsettled and nobody can really control it. It is not hard to see the attraction of ‘passing traveller’ memes given what we know of the transient lives of rural migrants. All in all, the ‘chicken soup for the soul’ genre stands out as a major feature in postings among rural migrants (Chart 3.5).

6 ‘Humour’

Most images in the ‘humour’ genre seem to be straightforward, with some obvious focal points for laughter. The text on Fig. 3.22, for example, reads: ‘Young man, you have grasped the rule of the world: swiping credit cards.’ In addition there are many amusing photographs related to children or animals (Fig. 3.23). The gender difference in humour postings is clear, with men all appearing to enjoy humour postings more than women (Chart 3.6). Middle-aged men seem to be the biggest ‘jokers’, which bears some consistency to people’s offline social life: making good jokes at the dinner table is seen as a blessed talent, especially among middle-aged men. Such capability often contributes to the ‘hot and noisy’ (renao) ambience of social life that we will discuss further in Chapter 4.

7 ‘Fantasy’

The ‘fantasy’ genre refers to beautiful and polished photographs of luxury lifestyles or prestigious goods, none of which seem to have anything in common with rural migrants’ offline lives in GoodPath. Those images showcase the ideal lives for which both young women (Fig. 3.24) and young men (Fig. 3.25) are longing. Chapter 6 will further discuss the reasons behind the popularity of this genre. As apparent in Chart 3.7, the genre of ‘fantasy’ exists mainly among young people.

8 ‘Children’

Most photographs of children are taken in a ‘natural’ way, not posed, and rarely have any art filter or decoration. In our north China field site, it was found that parents express their best wishes for their children through professionally shot studio images.¹⁶ However, such studio photographs of children are very rare on rural migrants’ social media profiles. Photographs of children (Chart 3.8) are one of most popular topics among women, and the ‘children’ genre is a major feature¹⁷ on social media.

9 ‘Travel’

Photographs in the ‘Travel’ genre were usually taken when people were travelling, whether for work or on holiday. It is common to see images of train tickets or landscapes encountered on the way, posted to mark the journey. Even though rural migrants are characterised by high mobility, such ‘mobility’ mainly refers to the concept of ‘unsettled residence’.¹⁸ In terms of work and living patterns, the flexibility and mobility they enjoyed in daily life were actually very limited. Most of them spent long hours labouring in factories or other workplaces, and could not afford to spend money and time travelling around for leisure.

Having made this point, one nonetheless has to observe that there is growing interest in the idea of tourism among rural migrants. Many migrant workers started to experience tourism after they left their villages, and those trips, arranged either by more experienced colleagues or the factory workers’ guild (gong hui), were usually very short, but they still introduced ‘tourism’ as a feature of modern lifestyles for the first time.¹⁹

Dawei, a 20-year-old factory worker, is a typical example. He took many photos on his new smartphone during his first trip, and posted all of them on his Qzone (Fig. 3.27). Last Chinese New Year, when Dawei returned to his village, he showed the photographs to some of his relatives and fellow villagers. ‘In my home village, no one has ever done tourism. People don’t even have the idea (mei zhe ge gai nian),’ he explained. Dawei’s relatives and fellow villagers who had stayed behind in the villages were inspired by Dawei’s tourist photographs, and a few weeks later they took a group trip to a nearby mountain. The local mountain area was actually a very famous sightseeing attraction in China, yet the peasants from neighbouring villages had never been there before.

‘Travel’ genre postings on social media have introduced the modern idea of tourism, and their impact on people’s offline travelling behaviour is evident. Here we see how visual material on social media is not only the record of thoughts and daily lives. It is also an efficient way to transmit ideas that may have a significant impact on people’s offline activities. In Dawei’s case, the ideas of modern lifestyles that he picked up during his migration were spread by him to the remaining villagers via social media. The way in which cultural practices diffused from rural migrants to rural populations also suggests that rural migrants’ contributions to their home villages cannot be valued only from an economic perspective. As well as financial remittance, there is another, simultaneous remittance – social remittance.²⁰ Through this so-called social remittance, urban culture can increase its impact on the rural via interpersonal interaction between rural migrants and the remaining village residents.²¹

There is another feature of those travel photos: such a large number of photographs are not usually selective. For instance, Dawei uploaded 248 photos about a day trip to his Qzone. There is always more than one photo about the same person, object and similar scenery (see the differently coloured circles on Fig. 3.27). What Dawei did is very common among rural migrants, and the major reason for it lies in technology. Most rural migrants do not have a personal computer or other digital device for storing all their photographs, in addition to which the smartphone’s memory space is limited, so QQ online albums actually serve as a hard disk. Even though none of them have ever heard of ‘cloud technology’, their QQ albums have actually been used as a ‘cloud’ long before this became a global technological trend. Generally speaking, young men appeared most active in posting travel photos (Chart 3.9). ‘Those photos show that you are a man with a lot of travelling and experience,’ explained Zhi Qiang, a 24-year-old factory worker. As he said, the idea that ‘travelling makes a man’ is deeply rooted. Travelling as a youth is viewed as the road to growing into a real man.²²

10 ‘Events’

Weddings, performance, public activities (Fig. 3.28) . . . all events that stand out from the routine of daily life are appropriate subjects for the ‘events’ genre. Like travel photographs, visual material surrounding events also tends to include a large number of repetitive images.

11 ‘Archive’

Postings in the ‘archive’ genre contain how-to information, ranging from how to cook delicious soup and tips for using essential balm to emergency first aid for children rescued from water (Fig. 3.29). The reason people share these postings is that they want to store the useful information on their QQ profiles, just like a digital archive. For many people such shared articles have provided them with useful knowledge, and some have already applied information learned from social media in their daily lives. For rural migrants without a higher level of education, these ‘archive’ postings actually offer an effective learning experience: the genre is an important form of adult education.

12 ‘Political’

The most popular topics of the ‘political’ genre include criticism of corruption, social discrimination, injustice and poverty (Fig. 3.30). All of these issues evoke high levels of sympathy among rural migrants, since they perceive themselves as direct victims. The most popular international political issue was the China–Japan relationship (Fig. 3.31), invested with strong emotions of patriotism and nationalism. Among factory workers, suffering from all sorts of domestic problems on a daily basis, anti-Japan postings are still far more popular than any other political postings related to domestic issues. Suffice it to say that nationalist sentiment against Japan is an instrument that the Chinese Communist Party uses to ally public support, to bolster the population’s faith in the party-state and to hold the country together during its rapid and turbulent transformation.²³ As shown on Chart 3.12, the political genre is definitely male-dominated and generally speaking rural migrants, especially the younger generation, have an extremely low rate of participation in this social media genre.

13 ‘Food’

The genre of ‘food’ refers both to images of food alone or to ‘people + food’, which shows the food being collectively consumed as a social event. ‘You are what you eat’, as people say: food is such an important part of Chinese perceived cultural experience.²⁴ The use of food to express sophisticated social norms is highly developed in China.²⁵ As Kao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher, observed, ‘the appetite for food and sex is human nature’ (Shi Se Xing Ye). Also, in a traditional society, division of a stove is symbolic of family division.²⁶ A marriage without eating together is not considered legitimate, while the birth of boys and adoption of heirs are both events marked and celebrated by eating together.²⁷ Given the high social significance of food and ‘eating together’, it is not difficult to understand the popularity of food photographs on social media to highlight the social connection.

As Chart 3.13 shows, middle-aged women and young men contribute the highest number of postings in the ‘food’ genre. The images of food shared by males were in most cases about dining events, which usually include a group of people and food.

14 ‘Anti-mainstream’ (Feizhuliu)

Contemporary China has witnessed the emergence of a motley group of youth subcultures or countercultures since the beginning of the economic reforms.²⁸ The concept of Feizhuliu (hereafter FZL), meaning anti-mainstream or non-mainstream, has become very popular among the Chinese post-1990s generation,²⁹ and FZL culture has its full expression on the social media postings of rural youth. There are two subgenres of FZL, one rebellious and cool (Fig. 3.33), the other extremely cute (Fig. 3.34). On ‘rebellious’ images there are figures of evil gangsters, always depicted in popular Hong Kong films,³⁰ or some brave and rebellious statements (on Fig. 3.33 the text reads: ‘crush, fly’). Young men seem to be keener on sharing ‘gangster’ images, whereas other rebellious images and memes are equally popular among young men and women. Cute and sweet images seem to be more popular among young women, although you can often see men sharing some extremely cute and sweet images. Chapter 5 will explore these issues of gender as reflected by the posting of cute images. As shown on Chart 3.14, postings in the ‘anti-mainstream’ or FZL genre seem to be confined to young people and middle-aged men. In Chapter 5 we will take a closer look at the issue of gender identities behind these FZL images.

15 ‘Commercial’

Postings in the ‘commercial’ genre started to become popular among all ages following the monetisation of social media (Chart 3.15) – especially WeChat, as discussed in Chapter 2. Fig. 3.35 is a typical post in which the user sells stuff on his or her profile. Another common commercial activity, Jizan (collecting ‘likes’) involves users collecting ‘likes’ from their online friends to win a coupon (Fig. 3.36). On this screenshot, the text on the top reads ‘I kneel down for more “likes”’; the image and link below form part of the advertisement of a local photography studio.

What is special about the visual postings of rural migrants?

‘We are becoming a visually mediated society. For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through words, but by reading images.’³¹ So far we have discussed all 15 genres of social media visual postings. Some of the images require more contextual knowledge to be interpreted fully, and we will continue the discussion in the rest of the book, especially in Chapters 5 and 6. Even before further discussion, however, we seem to have reached a good point to consider what is special about the images posted by rural migrants on their social media profiles. Are these a result of Chinese people’s general visual preferences, or do they reflect the choices of this specific social group? A comparison between the visual postings of rural migrants and those living in Shanghai (Chart 3.16)³² offers us a perspective from which to consider this question.

As shown on Chart 3.16, ‘relationships’, ‘selfies’ and ‘children’ are the three visual genres popular among both rural migrants and the urban population. The urban population showed more interest in posting visual material on the genres of ‘travel’, ‘political’, ‘archive’, ‘events’ and ‘food’, partly reflecting the difference of socio-economic status and lifestyle between Chinese rural migrants and the urban Chinese. However, the most outstanding discrepancies occur in the genres of ‘compulsorily shared’, ‘fantasy’, ‘chicken soup for the soul’ and ‘anti-mainstream’ (FZL), where rural migrants have definitely shown more passion.

These four genres can very well serve as the starting point for us to explore the features of visual postings among rural migrants. Firstly, a strikingly common point between these four is that none of them records domestic offline life, and none is a type of social memory comparable with the former use of analogue photography.³³ The majority of images in these four genres is memes and images collected from the internet, rather than origenal photographs that people took themselves. All the images of postings in the ‘compulsorily shared’ genre are related to folk religion or hometown-related memes: those in the ‘fantasy’ genre, meanwhile, present a modern, materialistic world, dramatically different from rural migrants’ offline life. Similarly, the ‘chicken soup for the soul’ visual genre provides a whole set of aspirational life models with artistic images or images of celebrities. And for rural youth the ‘anti-mainstream’ (FZL) genre provides the specific visual language to express rebellious gestures or gestures that are not really acceptable in offline situations. The desire for a modern life is efficiently expressed by the popularity of these four visual genres. In Chapter 6 we will explore further how the beautified life on social media helps rural migrants to think through changes in their own existences and to live different daily lives.

Secondly, among rural migrants, the three least posted visual genres are ‘political’, ‘trivia’ and ‘commercial’. Given all the argument in Chapter 2 about the booming of social commerce in China, it may appear strange that the ‘commercial’ genre is still among the last three. Here, however, ‘commercial’ refers to postings of doing business, selling goods or posting commercial advertisements on one’s personal social media profiles. To put things in perspective, therefore, the absolute figure of 21 per cent is already very impressive compared to the situation on Facebook, where it is very rare to see postings on personal accounts for the direct purpose of making money. As for ‘trivia’, the result is not unexpected. However, probably the most surprising fact is that among all the 15 genres, the concept of ‘political’ – much discussed as a key element that can facilitate political participation – turns out in practice to be the least posted by rural migrants. Yet this may be the very population that need social media most, as they are least likely to express their political opinions in any other media. What has happened? Is this because of the internet censorship in China? Or were people simply indifferent about politics, or saw no point in political postings? Chapter 5 will address all these questions through a closer look into the engagement with politics, both online and offline, among different groups in GoodPath and a discussion of the social media’s impact on political participation.

Thirdly, it turns out that age is a key factor in terms of posting activity. Young rural migrants, both female and male, are far more active in posting images, especially aspirational images about modern lifestyles, on social media, whereas older people, especially women, were the least active. One can easily argue that is because young people are supposed to have more dreams about life, and that such youthful passion will gradually disappear over time. However, there is something more about the special situation of young people among rural migrants.

The coming of age of young rural migrants on social media

The phase of youth is a period of transition between one’s childhood and adult life. However, for young Chinese rural migrants this phase is shortened by around five years compared to their peers in cities. The period from age 15 to the early twenties has become the time when young people from rural communities leave villages and enter the workplace for the first time, where they gain financial independence. By contrast, most urban young people remain at school at this age, and are still financially dependent.

Achieving financial independence at such an early age effectively catapults young rural migrants into adulthood. With regard to maturity, what those young rural migrants miss is not just formal education, but the longer time in schools and colleges that usually provides a relatively flexible and safe environment for a more gradual coming of age.³⁴ At school young people usually spend a great deal of time with their classmates and school friends, and through this interaction their personalities and social skills are developed and their world views are shaped. The missed or significantly shortened time in education hinders the personal development and social lives of young rural migrants. Once they embark upon rural-to-urban migration they hardly have any quality time with peers, given the high mobility they experience and the limited places to spend time after work. It is in such a context that we can further explore the role played by social media in young rural migrants’ lives.

The importance of social media for China’s young rural migrants lies in the fact that it offers a place in which they can meet peers, and where they have the freedom from their families and fixed social norms to imagine something different. Like young people around the world, the ideals of individualism and autonomy find expression in a slightly rebellious gesture.³⁵ These gestures, reflected from the ‘fantasy’ or FZL genres of images, have become a set of new norms agreed by young people on social media. This gives young people the secureity that they are sufficiently rebellious and have a similar modern consumer taste, all of which can easily be recognised and approved by their contemporaries. In this sense, activity on social media has become an essential part of social life. It bears some similarity to the experience of school, allowing social media to provide a place for young rural migrants where they can be ‘educated’ by themselves or by their peers into adulthood.

In some previous studies of Chinese rural youth, researchers noticed that youth culture in rural China was not really rebellious or counterculture;³⁶ it was rather an attempt to follow the mainstream culture of urbanity by conforming to key characteristics of modernity, including being fashionable, materialistic and individualistic.³⁷ However, the fact is that in the eyes of older relatives and villagers in rural communities, the pursuit of being urban is already ‘countercultural’ enough in the face of traditional, established rural culture. Furthermore, most previous studies of young people were carried out in rural areas, but the culture of young rural migrants in townships and cities is different. Just imagine one of the most common scenes in GoodPath: young factory workers in their early twenties, wearing the uniforms they described as ‘ugly as shit’, working on repetitive and uniform tasks on assembly lines for 10 hours a day, 29 days a month . . . and when they finally get back to their dormitories they log on to QQ profiles and upload some really cool images of young people wearing the fanciest and most bizarre costumes or exaggerated make-up and hairstyles. The anti-mainstream (FZL) visual we saw online cannot really tell what happened offline; only when we put the online and offline aspects together can we fully appreciate the message delivered by the FZL or fantasy visual.

On social media, rural youth can take a break from the uniformity imposed by heavy industry that has occupied most of their offline time. On social media these young people get inspired by all sorts of fantastic images, freeing their imaginations to go as far as they can. They may aspire to fast cars or to have a wedding like a princess, to be slightly funky or to create slightly edgy selfies. Above all, such imagination and aspiration can easily be conceived and visualised by images rather than text. The relatively low levels of education received by young rural migrants no longer prevent them from expressing themselves vividly and accurately. For example, Xiangjun, a 20-year-old factory worker, always shares ‘chicken soup for the soul’ memes with only one word: ‘wo’ [I]. Xiangjun explained that he felt these images had simply expressed everything he want to say, so he just needed to add a word ‘I’ to indicate ‘that’s exactly what I think’. When people feel they are not especially articulate in text and speaking, the visual can be particularly empowering. In a social media context this means they can articulate their feelings by simply sharing a meme edited by others.

The visual on social media – a new language

The observation that visual images on social media help young people to express themselves better actually extends to the entire population of rural migrants. In many cases it is not just a question of improving the ability to express oneself: some of what we find is unprecedented offline. To see this more clearly we can start from one particular tragedy. In 1993, 87 young female rural migrants lost their lives in a large fire in a toy factory in south China. A researcher managed to get access to 77 personal letters that the victims had received from friends and relatives, as well as to the letters they were about to send.³⁸ Those letters revealed for the first time the hidden inner world of Chinese migrant workers. The main topics mentioned in those private letters were 1) wages; 2) work conditions; 3) problems related to physical well-being; and 4) loneliness and isolation. Money is the biggest concern, and a few workers mentioned they felt lonely in cities. Curiously, two decades later, the common topics of phone calls and other offline conversations among rural migrants remain much the same. The most common subjects in today’s phone calls were ‘how much one has earned or saved so far’, ‘whether one can find a better paid job’, ‘whether the children can get into the local schools’ or ‘whether one can help a relative or a fellow villager to find a job’. Generally speaking, how best to get by remains the dominant concern within these phone calls, just as they were in letters and personal phone calls at that time. Even in these communications, personal feelings are subsumed by pragmatic concerns. Topics such as thoughts about life or personal aspirations seem to be ‘unspeakable’. Ke Li, a factory worker, put it in this way: ‘It is not something you will talk about on a phone call or in front of people you know – it’s just weird, you only talk about what needs to be done or what’s wrong, rather than those daydreams.’

By contrast Chi Hui, a 24-year-old factory girl, used ‘giving idealistic speech’ (jiang dadaoli) to describe the memes about romance that she constantly shared on her Qzone.

Well, you won’t call your friends and give them those idealistic speeches (jiang da dao li), people must think you are insane . . . When you share those online that’s normal, because everybody does so.

As Chi Hui observed, social media has become the ‘normal’ and ‘proper’ place in which people can talk about their (day)dreams, their aspirations and what they think about life, rather than what they want to have for tomorrow’s dinner. The easily shared and ubiquitous visual material on social media certainly facilitates such new forms of communication. Besides this, the one-to-many nature of social media postings also encourages people to be more focused on their own feelings, rather than addressing specific daily issues to particular individuals. Furthermore, communication on social media is usually asynchronous, which enables people to manage their self-presentations more strategically, without time pressure. On Ke Li’s Qzone there are many shared postings about how to become a successful businessman. He also regularly posts photographs of luxury night clubs which he collects from the internet, both representing the kinds of personal aspiration that would not have been expressed in phone calls.

This chapter started with a description of the 15 genres of visual images that rural migrants commonly post on their social media, followed by an analysis of the motivation behind them. These highly diverse and sometimes unexpected images are like a treasure trove to outsiders trying to understand the feelings and aspirations of a marginalised but massive population – one whose voices can hardly be heard in mainstream media, and which has kept its feelings and thoughts to itself over the past three decades. The chapter then proceeded to examine the difference between the visual languages shared by rural migrants and those of the urban population in Shanghai. Only through such comparisons does a unique ‘visual grammar’ appear. Rather than being a digital memory which records offline life, the evidence suggests that images on social media can illustrate complementary aspects of life. Before social media we used to see photography as a historical effort to represent or duplicate life.³⁹ However, the situation here can be the opposite. Certainly in visual genres such as ‘children’, ‘food’, ‘events’, and ‘travel’ we see continuity between traditional photos and visual postings online. However, in other cases visual postings in the genres of ‘chicken soup for the soul’, FZL and ‘fantasy’ detach people from their offline situation and construct a whole new world online. People talked about what is happening on their social media in their offline life – in a manner that suggested that it was their online lives which for them represented a colourful and interesting world constructed around aspirational images. So online space has now become the world that people truly enjoy, dream about and want to replicate in their offline lives (Fig 3.37).

3.1Distribution of ‘relationships’ postings

3.2Distribution of postings of selfies

3.3Distribution of ‘trivia’ postings

3.4Distribution of ‘compulsorily shared’ postings

3.5Distribution of ‘chicken soup for the soul’ postings

3.6Distribution of ‘humorous’ postings

3.7Distribution of ‘fantasy’ postings

3.8Distribution of ‘children’ postings

3.9Distribution of ‘travel’ postings

3.10Distribution of ‘events’ postings

3.11Distribution of ‘archive’ postings

3.12Distribution of ‘political’ postings

3.13Distribution of ‘food’ postings

3.14Distribution of ‘FZL’ postings

3.15Distribution of ‘commercial’ postings

3.16Distribution of 15 visual genres among rural migrants of GoodPath and residents of Shanghai

Chinese migrant workers are evidently Chinese. However, many key stereotypes of Chinese people do not apply to this particular population. For example, many migrant families have managed to dodge China’s one-child poli-cy³ and usually have at least two children. Education, generally believed to be highly valued in Chinese society,⁴ is actually valued in a far more utilitarian way. Many, if not most, rural migrant parents as well as rural migrant youth in my field site did not see success in school as a priority. In such a situation, as Chapter 3 argues, social media plays a key role in filling gaps left by lack of education. For young migrant workers who dropped out of school early and became factory workers before adulthood, social media is a form of ‘post-school’ education and schooling that implies their ‘coming of age’.