Adaptive agency: the satire genre and the motives behind its use in the era of social media in China

In the era of social media, formerly passive audiences have become active creators and distributors of content, expressing autonomy, free speech, and dissent online. Satire has emerged as a key cultural artifact, allowing netizens to overturn official discourses and provide alternative portrayals of politics and social issues. In Western contexts satire is a humor sub-genre with social critique; in China, research has emphasized its subversive potential but also its strategic, safe expression of dissent under constraints. Not all subversive satire is acceptable; cultural and political boundaries shape what can be joked about, making motivations crucial to understand. This paper adopts a meta-discursive approach focusing on stand-up comedy in China to analyze inherent motivations and reference frames in satire use. Stand-up in China has grown via variety shows (e.g., Rocke-Roast, Roast!), elevating everyday social issues (gender equality, employment, urban-rural gaps) to trending topics. Using scripts and interviews with 33 comedians, the study asks: (1) What are the features of Chinese satire in the social media era? (2) What reference frames and motives shape these features and satirists’ use of satire? Findings show satire centers on micropolitics of daily life, with attitudes formed by aversion to hypocrisy, release of past pain, and performative morality. Relief, kynicism, and symbolism motivate using satire as public communication. Creating and employing satire reflects a meta-discursive adaptive agency: satirists both adapt to rules and push to re-establish norms in unconventional ways.

Motives of satire creation and consumption have been analyzed along five lines. (1) Relief: satire provides comic relief and elastic adaptation to social unpleasantness; carnivalesque laughter temporarily suspends norms (Bergson, Bakhtin), offering pleasure that substitutes for problem-solving. (2) Cynicism: rooted in low trust and helplessness, producing apolitical or nihilistic ‘pseudo-satire’; contrasted with Sloterdijk’s ‘kynicism,’ which remains critical yet constructive and hopeful. (3) Activism: satire can attract engagement with serious topics, translating anger into emancipatory critique, but satirists often prefer roles as eye-openers rather than interventionists. (4) Ritual: satire as collaborative practice that builds co-presence, group identity, solidarity, and pre-politicization through networked sharing. (5) Symbolism: satire showcases superiority in skill/knowledge/morality; cultural capital and literacy shape who can produce and appreciate satire. Motives are often parallel and contradictory; hybrid forms (investigative comedy, journalistic news satire) blend professionalism and carnivalesque to challenge the status quo. Most prior work stems from democratic-corporatist systems; fewer studies examine non-Western, non-news satirists’ rationales, necessitating attention to China’s sociopolitical climate. Satirical thoughts in Chinese culture are shaped by norms valuing seriousness, tastefulness, and avoidance of vulgarity or disrespect, with symbolic orientation highlighting wisdom and consideration. Historically, satire (e.g., Pai You performances) catered to elites, often ridiculing ordinary people from a superior perspective, thereby consolidating norms as much as challenging them. Satirists’ agency has traditionally been legitimized by entertaining while adapting targets to fit ‘healthy’ jokes under varying constraints, yielding flexible but unstable values. Beyond the ‘context-of-satire’ (audience, politics, culture), the paper emphasizes ‘context-in-satire’: how satirists weave perceptions and experiences into scripts via genre features and linguistic devices. This processual view links background experiences, emotions, and meaning networks to satire production in contemporary China.

Design: Discursive Historical Analysis (DHA) combined with semi-structured interviews to examine how satirists and targets are constructed and rationalized. DHA, a critical discourse analysis approach, situates discourse within historical/sociocultural contexts to demystify ideologies. Data: First-hand satire scripts from 33 stand-up satirists; age 20–50, >70% male, mostly 25–35 with bachelor’s degrees; many are part-time comedians. Researcher embedded as a stand-up comedian in seven clubs (South China) from Sept 2020–Apr 2021 to recruit and collect original scripts, avoiding producer-edited versions. Inclusion criteria distinguished satire from comedy by intention (laughter as means to critique) and by linguistic devices (irony, parody, humor) and operational indicators drawn from Chinese NLP: (1) positive high-intensity words in negative contexts; (2) recontextualization mocking existing discourses; (3) reprimanding/belittling targets or excessive self-deprecation linked to social concerns. Scripts not meeting criteria were excluded; unclear ‘points’ were clarified with informants. Analysis: Three-step DHA procedure—(1) topic/theme exploration; (2) identifying key actors and discursive strategies; (3) analyzing linguistic means. Computer-aided LDA topic modeling (R) aided theme identification: preprocessing removed stopwords/punctuation; tokenization; manual cleanup for English/Cantonese stopwords; frequency analysis; topic number selection via Cao et al. (2009) similarity coefficient (minimizing intra-topic similarity), choosing 4 topics for interpretability. DHA dimensions: nomination (nouns labeling self/targets), predication (adjectives/adverbs evaluating actors), argumentation (rationales/frames legitimizing judgments). Interviews: 33 semi-structured interviews (40–150 min), face-to-face or WeChat, conducted in Chinese, recorded with consent, anonymized, transcribed and translated. Protocol covered routines, work experience, benefits/challenges, motives, rationales, and constraints. Coding: two-step open and deductive coding (Saldaña): first-order ‘facts’ (attitudes/behaviors/contexts), then second-order explanations/theorization referencing literature on satire motives. Triangulation: integrating interview codes with LDA themes and DHA findings to reveal motives and schemata.

General features from frequency analysis and DHA: (1) Depoliticized, micropolitical focus: protagonists and targets are primarily in personal social circles (gender roles, family, workplace) rather than macro actors (state, nation). Top nouns: ‘girl’ (128), ‘friend’ (55), ‘Guangzhou’ (47), ‘my mother’ (43), ‘work’ (40). (2) Emotional channel: satire expresses complex emotions—anger (‘angry’, 24), complaints (‘domineering’, 19), but also positive expectations (‘considerate’, 22). LDA topic modeling (4 topics): • Theme 1: Regional stereotypes (e.g., ‘accent’, ‘Cantonese’, ‘Andy Lau’, marriage, clothing), often self-embarrassing narratives about prejudice. • Theme 2: Workplace hegemony (e.g., ‘domineering’, ‘boss’, ‘stingy’, ‘company’), reflecting anger at work hierarchies. • Theme 3: Sexual innuendo (e.g., ‘massage’, ‘bar’, ‘good-looking’), seedy entertainment contexts and flirtation. • Theme 4: Emotional/family relationships (e.g., ‘mother’, ‘wife’, ‘friend’, ‘subjective’, ‘emotion’), critiquing patriarchal norms (son preference, unequal labor/status). Distinctive traits vs. traditional Chinese satire: (a) First-person, personalized, grounded narratives versus third-person historical anecdotes; (b) Explicit value judgments (adjectives/adverbs) with no fixed ideological ‘gold standard’; targets include parents (authoritarian) and sex workers (sometimes praised), indicating pluralistic values; (c) Production intertwined with social relations—satirists balance family ties, moral concerns, and pluralistic values. Three interpretive sources shaping satire: (1) Inconsistency between ideals and practice: laughter from incongruity (e.g., a university slogan ‘Promote social fairness and justice’ versus favoritism); satire conveys ambivalence and negotiated positions within rules, often serving relief/complaint rather than systemic challenge. (2) Pain/trauma: scripts often draw on gendered trauma and humiliation (e.g., son preference, divorce, domestic violence), fostering sensitivity to inequality; reflexive self-mockery tempers criticism, blending sadness, irritation, and optimism, encouraging resignation and self-consolation over rebellion. (3) Performance/game of satire-making: satirists strategically select targets and narratives to fit media logics, regulations, and commercial incentives. They avoid taboo topics (political power, religion, race, nationality), align with online anti-elitist sentiments (e.g., mocking professors’ jargon amid harassment scandals), and adopt dramatization, simplification, personalization to maximize resonance and traffic. Platform differentiation enables both conformity and resistance: text-first Weibo as idea lab; Bilibili allows deeper topics (e.g., death, mental illness) with less pressure on video length/frequency than TikTok/Kuaishou. Overall, motivations map onto relief, kynicism (constructive skepticism with hope), and symbolism, crystallizing an adaptive agency: satirists adapt to constraints while pushing boundaries to re-establish norms in unconventional ways.

Findings address the research questions by showing that contemporary Chinese satire centers on everyday micropolitics, articulated through first-person narratives with explicit, pluralistic values, and is motivated by relief, kynicism, and symbolic performance. Satirists’ interpretive frames—aversion to hypocrisy, processing of trauma, and performative morality under platform and regulatory logics—yield a pattern of adaptive agency. Rather than direct confrontation or passive submission, satirists negotiate constraints, select morally safe yet resonant targets (often anti-elitist/patriarchal), and harness polarization and dramatization to gain visibility and economic rewards. This commercialization of moral discourse can grant satirists a public critic persona while primarily serving conversion of symbolic to economic capital. Compared to traditional Chinese satire’s third-person, value-neutral, elite-oriented entertainment, present-day satire is realist, self-exposing, and boundary-pushing in language and topics (e.g., sexual innuendo), reflecting a more open, plural public sphere. Yet, the agency is ambivalent: many satirists are non-interventionist, focusing on form rather than substance, reiterating clichés (e.g., marriage pressure, men’s incompetence), and adopting defensive, ritualized humor that avoids deep problem-solving. Social status and cultural capital facilitate safe target selection and monetization, potentially producing ‘contaminated agency’ that neglects the most vulnerable and eschews politically sensitive but socially significant topics. Framed by Mbembe’s ‘convivial tensions’ and Scott’s ‘hidden transcripts,’ adaptive agency explains how satirists in a constrained environment coexist with power while creatively stretching boundaries via platform-specific strategies, making Chinese satire neither purely subversive nor submissive but a negotiated, overlapping field of discourses.

This study elucidates the generic features and motives of Chinese satire in the social media era through first-hand stand-up scripts and interviews. Satire primarily addresses micropolitics of daily life and is shaped by satirists’ aversion to hypocrisy, processing of past pain, and performative morality. Motivations of relief, kynicism, and symbolism coalesce into an adaptive agency that both conforms to and subtly reshapes norms. Methodologically, combining DHA, LDA topic modeling, and interviews offers a comprehensive lens on context-of-satire and context-in-satire. Conceptually, adaptive agency explains overlapping, distinctive orientations of satire across cultures. Future research should extend beyond stand-up to other Chinese satirical forms (e.g., crosstalk, sketches) and examine satire under other authoritarian or post-authoritarian regimes, integrating creators’ cross-field experiences to better account for orientations of cultural production.

The focus on stand-up comedy and a limited number of scripts (from 33 satirists) may constrain generalizability across Chinese satire genres such as crosstalk or sketches. The study centers on China; without direct evidence from other authoritarian or post-authoritarian contexts, broader comparative claims are limited. Moreover, satirists’ non-interventionist roles and emphasis on micropolitics may bias findings toward form over substantive policy critique.