Crafting multimodal argumentative meshworks

Abstract

Short videos depicting rural China have gained popularity on social media domestically and internationally. Among the genre’s creators, Li Ziqi stands out for her unique style of culinary craft, starting from the most basic materials. I interpret Li Ziqi’s mushroom videos as multimodal “argumentative meshworks” casting a counterstatement to the “involuted” urban life and nature/culture division. To unfold the analyses, I first place videos in the context of urban ills. Built on previous studies of multimodal argumentation and entanglement anthropology, I define “argumentative meshworks” in three aspects: a human-nonhuman entanglement, a simplicity-complexity harmony, and a production-audience interaction. Then I select three mushroom videos as artefacts to unpack the multimodal meshworks. Following the empirical call argumentation studies, I use viewers’ comments to support my points throughout the whole piece. This inquiry explores multimodal argumentation’s new possibility to not only stress things out but create space for harmony and peace of mind.