"A real China": On user-generated videos - Audiovisual narratives of confucianism

Abstract

Beneath the "Chinese success story," social stratification, class polarization, and cultural displacement have increased dramatically. Can Confucian values contribute to dissolving the downsides of modernization in contemporary Chinese society? This paper investigates the current revival of Confucianism as a form of critique and a means of reconstructing of the Chinese socio-culture. Its data are user-generated videos. By means of a thematic audiovisual narrative analysis, the study is based on the material of 20 hours of Youku Paike videos uploaded between 2007 and 2013. The results are: (1) About one third of the user-generated videos can be interpreted as Confucian thematic narratives with a slightly increasing trend in portrayals of values of Confucian origin. (2) Under the circumstances of China's present modernization and cyberization, Confucianism may be contributing to the formation of a new online socio-culture advocating social action and humanistic values.