The Narrative Analysis Of Rural Daily Life In Kuaishou Short Videos

For a long time,the policy propaganda videos in mainstream media of China are the main way for people to acquaint with the rural areas.The central topics in them mostly are the major issues of “agriculture,rural areas and farmers” or the reports of rural elites,and less attention is paid to the ordinary villagers’ living-existence and daily-experience.While in the modern Internet age,short videos gradually become a new way of information dissemination with the rapid development of self-media.Kuaishou is the most popular short video self-media platform in rural area which allows the rural residents to present their own daily life.The images of rural residents are gradually changing from hidden objects to self-exposing subjects through the all aspects of rural daily life showing in their short videos.So based on the background information,the research question is,what kind of countryside the short videos presented in Kuaishou,and what do the rural people want by choosing Kuaishou to show their countryside daily life? And how do technology and individual life experience narration affect the social changes and development in traditional rural areas?This study was performed in fourteen selected villages of Dahuangshan sub-district in Xuzhou.A total of 200 short videos were obtained by using systematic sampling in the short video accounts within its jurisdiction.Content analysis was applied to the qualitative data generated through three dimensions of identity,scene and theme.Through the qualitative data,it could be found that the number of short videos posted in Dahuangshan sub-district had been relatively large in the past two years and that the identities of the short video publishers were mostly ordinary rural residents and that the number of users between male and female were basically the same.The result also illustrated that most of them set account nicknames and personal profiles to reproduce their identities.They mainly created their short videos in family home,public open places,mobile transformation places and virtual interactive scenes according to the study findings.Additionally the study discovered that rural Kuaishou publishers presented their daily life by using personal selfies,pure pictures,music,and immersive and onlooker lens language.The themes of their presented short videos could be divided as the life of getting rich,the beauty of rural scenery,the leisure of self-entertainment and the inheritance of cultural etiquette.The study conducted 11 in-depth individual interviews with the Kuaishou short video publishers to grasp their narrative characteristics in producing rural daily life videos.The study analyzed the publishers’ social identity and cultural appeal and how they produced daily life short videos from the three aspects of narrative subjects,narrative purposes and narrative strategies.The study found out that the narrative subjects included rural entrepreneurs who were eager to work hard,rural residents who were idle at home and folk craftsmen who were quite capable of creation.They produced and published short videos of rural daily life for different purposes.Someone valued the algorithm recommendation mechanism in Kuaishou to get deeply bond with their fans,so they could earn money and subsidize family household.Someone saw short videos as a virtual notebook.They kept their instantaneous life memories and physical practices by filming them.There was also someone hoped to expand the influence and popularity of folk cultural heritage in short videos,promote the revitalization of rural culture and enhance rural cultural propaganda.In general,the rural Kuaishou publishers mainly used symbol identification,technical learning and material operation for short video narratives in order to achieve self-construction,ability improvement and emotional shape.Based on the analysis of the rural short videos’ daily life narration in Kuaishou,the study explores the reorganization of the village spokesperson and the communication changes in the daily life of the villagers.The changes of rural social life have a concrete visual presentation in short videos.Specifically,the image rural residents has transformed from the collective term farmer to individuals with self-expression due to the directly use of the stock knowledge and the Kuaishou application.They are being seen as the spokesperson of the rural area.At the same time,the public sphere represented by the Kuaishou application is closely integrated with the private sphere of rural residents.Their daily life of intimate relationship has become an existence that can be displayed and the instrumental rationality dominated by money becomes the basis of communication.Randomly organized commercial and interesting relationships have emerged and have begun to replace traditional kinship and family structure,but the thoughts of traditional rural society are still influencing the Kuaishou publishers the discourse level.It can be said that the living world of rural society is combing with virtual living spaces,but it is also affected by modern technology and the separation of urban and rural area.