Yingchuan Qu

Yingchuan Qu’s interdisciplinary work unpacks the affective background intensities circulating in China’s digital space through the lens of sociolinguistics.

Attending to interactions, expressions, discourses, and relationships, Qu's work on the everyday (a)political talk online, embedded in mundane social media spaces such as fashion blogs, Danmaku interactions, film/restaurant/book reviews, and reality show discussion boards, speaks to the substantial body of literature in three directions:

Firstly, it tries to explicate how the micropolitics of everyday meaning-making, including tangential discussions on gender, race, class, and state politics, is manifested in Chinese social media—oftentimes in playful ways;

Secondly, it traces how new modes of interaction emerge and evolve as individuals, platforms, state media, and other agents co-construct the socio-linguistic space

Finally, cautioned against the kind of “Digital Orientalism” aptly contended by many, by returning to the ordinary, Yingchuan aspires to carve out new perspectives for positioning Chinese Internet studies within the global media ecosystem.

Her recent research touches upon themes of memes, buzzword, Internet literature and remix culture.