Pastoral Nostalgia and Digital Media: A Case Study Exploring Nostalgia Communication in Li Ziqi’s Online Short Videos

Sammanfattning: The primary goal of this study is to observe how the meaning of nostalgia is negotiated and remediated in Li Ziqi’s short videos, and understand the construction and expression of pastoral images in the video, by examining its social modality of the audiencing site and the compositional and social modalities of the image site through a Critical Visual Approach(CVA). Except for CVA, Remix as a thinking tool helps to frame data selection, mixed methods and theories throughout. To be specific, the aim of this study is to examine Li Ziqi’s communication of nostalgia online via short videos, showcases how the pastoral characteristics are evoked in the videos and the relationship between nostalgia of pastoral life and short videos. Moreover, it is of interest to think about what nostalgia communication on short videos say about society. When it comes to the two sites, firstly, an ethnographic method of thick descriptions is used to study media text and selected comments on the audiencing site. Secondly, on the image site, compositional analysis on selected visual materials is used to examine its compositions and then signs and meanings embedded in them are analyzed through semiotic analysis and interpreted by thick descriptions. As for theories, nostalgia and media, the logic of social acceleration, remediation and new media, and simulacra and simulation are applied to facilitate discussion.