The Graphic Self of Public Intellectuals: Chinese Tiaoman as Digital Practices of Self-Representation on WeChat

This article focuses on tiaoman, or Chinese scrolling comic strips, a new genre of comic strips and digital art developed on mobile media. They are a type of digital comics arranged in vertical rows with multiple single-panel comics, and they are designed for reading on smartphones. Like Japanese manga and Korean Webtoons, Chinese tiaoman pluralize and challenge the aesthetic concepts and values of contemporary visual cultures. In online civic expressions, mobile internet users increasingly employ tiaoman in their public engagement. However, few studies explore the cultural effects of tiaoman in the field of public intellectuals. This research focuses on the tiaoman series Uncle Lion Diary posted on WeChat, a major mobile, instant messaging and social media platform in China. Uncle Lion is a cartoon portrayal of a prominent Chinese intellectual, Xu Zhiyuan, whose public opinions have frequently incurred controversies inside and outside China. With the theoretical lens of digital practice, and combining persona studies in the arena of public intellectuals, this study investigates tiaoman as an intellectual practice of visual self-representation in social and technological systems. The results show that tiaoman serves as a carrier for supplementing a transmedia self, in order to construct and marketize Xu’s already existing public persona. Further, they help create online–offline spaces for the commercialization of certain lifestyle and aesthetic tastes among their audiences.