Unsilencing the Home Village: A Discursive-Theoretical Analysis of the Construction of the Rural in Chinese Short Videos

With the rapid rise of digital technologies, short video, as a low-threshold media form, enables rural subjects to become visible in public sphere and realize expression performance self-identity. Drawing on Laclau Mouffe’s discourse theory theoretical backbone, this study adopted discourse-theoretical analysis 294 videos about daily life Chinese video sharing website Bilibili discuss how function discursive construction areas. The finds that, first all, people’s active practice dislocates hegemonic identity formation by demonstrating various dimensions Secondly, we can see three nodal points counter-hegemonic at work: humanized space for life, diversified citizenship with dignity, initiative responsibility national ideologies. Last but not least, although unprecedentedly amplify voice countryside’s discourse, such resistance is still limited inherently unbalanced power relations between urban rural.