27/11/2025 (Thursday) 13:00-14:00 E21-G002
“Local multimodal argumentative ambience” in social media: a case of flood, coal, and hometown
Abstract:
Although information can flow across geographical boundaries in the digital age, local arguments still hold in social media to connect communities especially in a time of disruption. This article explores a distinctive argumentative style of multimodal local arguments in social media, one which entangles people and place, blurs texts and contexts, and generates resonance without a clear instrumental goal. Pulling threads from studies on local arguments, multimodal arguments, social/digital media, and ambient rhetoric enmeshing human and nonhuman agencies, I coin the phrase “local multimodal argumentative ambience” to capture the distinctive genre. To illustrate, I use a case study on the hashtag arguments of communities in Shanxi, China’s top coal production province which suffered from rainstorms and floods in October 2021. Specifically, I analyze how the hashtag arguments evolve over time and interactive dynamics among arguers-content creators and audiences’ comments. The vitality of local multimodal argument in social media, I argue, lies not in its immediate instrumentality but in the lasting resonance it generated among local communities with shared precarities and resilience.
*This article won 2025 Xiao Award of Outstanding Rhetorical Research, Association for Chinese Communication Studies (ACCS)
Bio:
Junyi Lv, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Macau. She received her Ph.D. in communication from Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California. Her research centers on humans’ relations with (natural, built, virtual, and enmeshed) environments. Coming from a Chinese coal town that experienced boom then decline, she studies lived experience and everyday culture of coal communities in transition. She also studies China’s social media and creator cultures.
