Caveat emptor: boycott through digital humour on the wave of the 2019 Hong Kong protests

Abstract

This paper addresses the topic of social media users’ polyvocal political activism facilitated by participatory culture and expressed through multimodal digital humour (including humorous memes) in the context of a threat of a regime. The focus of attention is political humour on the r/HongKong subreddit, specifically the posts pertinent to the ongoing boycott movement of multiple companies consequent upon their actions in response to the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Apart from presenting the multimodal characteristics of the creative digital data through the lens of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, the central aim is to discuss the functions of users’ political humour online, offering various socio-pragmatic conclusions about the polyvocal participatory practice at hand. It is argued that this digital humour resides solely in the attention-grabbing form, with the otherwise serious posts performing informative and persuasive functions as they convey community members’ socio-political critique. While disparaging the ‘butts’, online users do bonding through collectively expressing their political dissent (which also gives them psychological relief) and sharing subversive ideologies. The humorous items inform and warn potential punters and tacitly call for a boycott of the companies that bow to the regime, all in an act of solidarity with Hong Kong protesters.