Digital remediation and visual manipulation: Blogs as breathing spaces for Chinese tattoo wearers and enthusiasts

Abstract

Digital remediation increasingly plays a pivotal role in delivering political messages. This study examines postings of corporeally mediated tattoos in a China-based blog, focusing on in what sense blogs can provide a breathing or even emancipating space for Chinese tattoo wearers and enthusiasts to control the viewer’s perceptions of tattooing and negotiate long-standing stigmatized associations of tattoos there. The study analyzes 305 postings collected from the blog covering a period between 24 April 2020 and 3 May 2021, taking a quantitative approach. Methodologically, it first analyses the distribution of the signs across body parts as displayed. By applying multimodal perspectives, this study also investigates photographic techniques such as distance, angle, gaze, and modality harnessed and exploited for visual manipulation during digital remediation of turning body narratives into digital narratives. Findings of the study suggest that digital remediation facilitates personal expression of tattoo wearers and photographic techniques play a critical role in introducing ready alignment of the viewer with the postings. The study thus adds quantitative inquiries to existing, mostly qualitative, studies of tattoos which usually rest on interviews with tattoo wearers, enthusiasts, and artists for an account of tattoo narratives in connection to personal expression and self-definition. Its findings would be inspiring to socially stigmatized and marginalized groups to circumvent social, cultural, and political barriers to communicate and make their stories heard to more people.