Drawing on social semiotic multimodal analysis, this paper conceptualizes colours as a semiotic mode, in which specific colours are “turned on” to fulfill two functions, namely: a) enacting fan relation and b) expressing judgement and affect triggered by video contents, signaling a change of context from video commenting to a collective act of colouring video comments. This paper contributes to this area by studying the use of colour when video comments are produced in the form of danmu on a Chinese video-sharing website Bilibili. While non-linguistic modes have been recognized to play an important role in meaning-making, less attention has been paid to the creative use of colour on social media. Social media provide their users with various semiotic resources for meaning-making in different modes (e.g., text, image, colour, etc.).
It is argued that these continuities and changes represent a reinforcement of patriarchal gendered relations (including gendered associations with specific colours) re-imagined through a postfeminist logic.
Furthermore, the colour attributes of the images underlined significant differences in how men and women are presented for viewing. The findings show some continuities in how men and women are presented, despite significant changes in which magazines presented these continuities. A second phase adds further novelty to this study by employing a cultural analytics approach to explore the relationship between gender and hue by analysing the brightness, saturation and hue values of each image. Firstly, content of the front covers from six popular men’s and women’s magazines was analysed to identify the framing, clothing, and staging of the body. In two phases, this study explores if and how this social shift has been translated into how men and women’s bodies are presented to male and female audiences, respectively, by magazines that claim to represent and reflect them. Arguably, postfeminism has provided a channel in which tropes traditionally critiqued by feminism, such as the objectification or stereotyping of the female body, are appropriated by consumption, and reconceptualised as empowering forms of femininity. From 2009 to 2018, social attitudes towards gender in the UK and other western countries significantly shifted, with greater awareness of gender stereotyping and the objectification of women’s bodies in the media due to popular social media campaigns.