‘I will write until I am heard!’ : The Poetic Resistance through Graffiti in China’s Urban Space and Social Media

Abstract: This thesis investigates the possibility of the mediated city providing a space for resistance in everyday life in a society where free speech channels are strictly controlled. The case studied in this thesis is the phenomenon of a group of fans of a singer who has been banned by the government in mainland China writing graffiti in public urban space on Rehe Road in Nanjing to express their love and support for their beloved singer. On the one hand, there is a growing crackdown from above on freedom of expression; on the other hand, urban space becomes the medium through which furtive resistance such as graffiti writing can take place. How can urban space be mediated, and how can ordinary citizens utilise mediated urban space to confront authorities? This is the thesis’ primary concern. Several methods were used in this study to collect enough data to fully understand the case. Photos of graffiti from four years (2017-2021), social media materials about graffiti, articles about graffiti, and interview transcripts of nine graffiti writers make up the empirical dataset. Data was collected through documentation, observation, and interviews, and then analysed using semiotic analysis and a qualitative coding process. The data collection process is guided by Internet Mediated Research methodology, and most empirical data analysis approaches are inspired by critical visual methodology. There are two key findings of this study. The first finding is about how the natures of place and urban space are changing in today’s media-saturated cities. In this study, the graffiti mediated Rehe Road in the real world before remediating the street on social media. Rehe Road’s material and virtual natures are both weakened and strengthened during the (re)mediation processes. As a result, instead of being a monolithic entity, the place and urban space have become a half-real and half-virtual existence. The second finding concerns the possibility of resistance occurring in the (re)mediated place and in urban space. This study notes that (re)mediated Rehe Road has become a space for creativity, power-deconstructions, and even spatial reconstructions from below. This study uses the term ‘poetic resistance’ to discuss young people’s act of writing graffiti in public space as a kind of mild, sometimes apolitical, timid resistance against the overwhelming power from above.