Prisms of Pathos: Environmental Memes as a Public Rhetorical Strategy in the Example of Haze-Related Duanzi in China

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210121.190How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Environmental Rhetoric, Haze-related Duanzi, Internet memes, Neo-Aristotelean Criticism, Pathos

Abstract

The literature on environmental rhetoric has focused on texts produced by traditional news media. However, digital texts, such as Internet memes, are increasingly being written by citizens for the public sphere. This study investigated practices of public environmental rhetoric in China, a society with relatively limited free speech.Considering that analysis is difficult due to the speed, scale, and context of how memes publicly expressing environmental rhetoric circulate digitally, we used haze-related Duanzi, a popular meme on the Chinese Internet, as an example. Our analysis of digital rhetoric adopted a multiple-method design. The public’s digital environmental rhetoric strategies pathos, in the context of network regulation, were traced and found to primarily feature appeals to the emotion of “confrontation–patriotism.” We found that although the production and dissemination of Internet memes only weakly stimulated public participation in environmental protection activities, they enabled emotional venting and increased environmental awareness.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ling Liu
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/01/23
TI  - Prisms of Pathos: Environmental Memes as a Public Rhetorical Strategy in the Example of Haze-Related Duanzi in China
BT  - Proceedings of the 6th Annual International Conference on Social Science and Contemporary Humanity Development (SSCHD 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 979
EP  - 989
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210121.190
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210121.190
ID  - Liu2021
ER  -