{"id":144,"date":"2013-06-11T16:25:56","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T20:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/?p=144"},"modified":"2013-09-18T15:43:23","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T19:43:23","slug":"culture-memes-as-creative-resistance-on-tiananmen-square-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/2013\/06\/11\/culture-memes-as-creative-resistance-on-tiananmen-square-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture Memes as Creative Resistance on Tiananmen Square Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ahead of last week\u2019s anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the Chinese government engaged in what has now become an expected annual crackdown on Internet freedom. This year, however, the government adopted more advanced and subtle means of censorship<\/a>. Rather than blocking all search results for sensitive terms, websites such as Weibo are instead displaying carefully curated results<\/a> that have little to do with the 1989 protests.<\/p>\n

Although Chinese censorship is ever-more sophisticated, Internet users in China are finding creative ways to express themselves and commemorate the tragedy. Memes – spontaneous, humorous, grass-roots-style online satirical works – are a significant feature of the Chinese Internet, ranging from 2009\u2019s Grass Mud Horse<\/a> to memes involving sunflower seeds and self-portraits of people wearing sunglasses<\/a>, both inspired by arrested Chinese dissidents. These memes take the form of photos, videos, animations, and texts that defy and ridicule Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n

This year, Chinese Internet users created multiple variations of an iconic photograph from the 1989 protests, incorporating images ranging from yellow ducks to Legos. These images began to circulate through social media in China days before the June 4th<\/sup> anniversary as a way to bypass censorship, and gained momentum largely for their humor and brevity.<\/p>\n

The famous photograph \u2013 known as \u201cTank Man\u201d<\/a> \u2013 of the 1989 protest has long been banned in Chinese cyberspace. The photo, featuring a man blocking a series of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protest on June 4, 1989, directly points to the dictatorship of Chinese government and has startled people worldwide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Days before this year\u2019s Tiananmen Square Anniversary, someone wittily replaced the four tanks in the original photograph with giant yellow ducks. The meme is based on a 54-foot-tall duck sculpture, created by a Dutch artist, that currently floats in Hong Kong\u2019s Victoria Harbor.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The \u201ctank man\u201d picture is also photoshopped into a Lego man facing down three green Lego tanks. By embedding these images in posts instead of using banned keywords, Internet users can often escape automatic deletion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Another picture showing a cow in front of a line of bulldozers is also getting past Weibo\u2019s censors. While Weibo has blocked the words \u201cbig yellow duck\u201d<\/a> in response to the memes, the word \u201ccow\u201d appears to be uncensored.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While censors continue to add new words to the blocklist<\/a>, Internet users continue to create new images, making it impossible for the government to shut down conversation about the Tiananmen Square protests entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new torrent of words including “today” and “June 4” referencing the Tiananmen Square Anniversary have been blocked from Chinese social media as the country engages in its annual crackdown on Internet, also known as “Internet Maintenance Day.” And though the Chinese government is running a sophisticated and tight censorship ship, they’re having a bit harder time blocking memes.
\n Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3687,359,53303,13363],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-china","category-memes","category-social-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4L9BV-2k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetmonitor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}