A Social Semiotic Analysis of Gendered Digital Discourse in China: Cyberbullying and Mythologies in the 2024 Yang Li-JD.com Controversy

Abstract

This study analyzes the 2024 Yang Li–JD.com controversy as a paradigmatic case of gendered meaning-making in China’s platformed public sphere. Using a social-semiotic framework, it integrates Barthes’ second-order signification and Eco’s cultural codes with accounts of literacy/interpretive distance (Goody; Ricœur), crowd formation and deindividuation (Le Bon; SIDE/disinhibition), and affective publics in post-truth media ecologies. Methodologically, the study undertakes an interpretive, multimodal analysis of selected verbal tokens (e.g., “普信男” pǔxìn nán, “average yet confident man”; “女拳” nǚquán, “female fist” as a derogatory slur for feminists), visual materials (promotional stills, doctored images, memes), and interactional practices (hashtags, boycott scripts, “cancellation” rituals) drawn from public reporting and platform artifacts. Findings show (1) the rapid mythification of Yang’s comedic signifiers into polarized emblems (truth-telling vs. “man-bashing”), (2) code clashes between satirical irony and harmony/face norms that pre-structure decoding, (3) the undomestication of discourse through virality and engagement metrics that privilege affect over context, (4) the emergence of a coordinated e-crowd whose moralized signaling normalized cyberbullying, and (5) institutional capitulation as brands arbitrate meaning by erasing contested signs. The study contributes to social semiotics by demonstrating the analytic payoff of blending textual, visual, and processual lenses to trace how signs travel from denotation to connotation and to social sanction. It also clarifies China-specific implications for platform governance and brand risk, and outlines avenues for mixed-methods research on semiotic cascades in algorithmic environments.