Biaoqing: The circulation of emoticons,emoji, stickers, and custom images on Chinese digital media platforms

摘要

The Mandarin Chinese term biaoqing, or ‘expression’, categorizes genres of visual contentranging from emoticons and emoji to stickers and custom images.This article is groundedon ethnographic research and approaches biaoqing in terms of their circulation acrossChinese digital media platforms.By formulating a comprehensive typologyof biaoqing genres, I foreground the situated socio-technical specificities of theircirculation: the creative play with typographical compositions, the affective repurposing ofgraphical emoticons, the platformed monetization of proprietary stickers, and theuser-driven proliferation of custom images.Drawing on this typology, I argue for the needto recognize the circulation of biaoqing as an emergent and malleable category of semioticresources profoundly shaped by two decades of development of the Internet in China.