From ASCII lanterns to synthetic livestreams: Three decades of Chinese digital folklore

Abstract

The history of the internet in China is often narrated from the standpoint of infrastructural development, commercial growth, and social change—a framework that foregrounds governmental policies, corporate decisions, and large-scale public debates. And yet, in parallel to these processes, the widespread adoption of the internet and its domestication by hundreds of millions of Chinese users have resulted in a long history of digital folklore: everyday, vernacular practices responding to this new communication medium through creativity and invention. By extending the concepts of folk, the lore and the vernacular to the realm of digital media, the analytical framework of digital folklore helps understanding the relationship between creativity and new communication technologies. Drawing on a rich body of academic research on the topic, this short essay reviews three decades of Chinese digital folklore, highlighting the continuities and peculiarities of vernacular creativity throughout the country’s internet history.