Media and Ambivalence| Repetition and Ambivalence in COVID-19-Related Chinese Political Jokes

Abstract

How do political jokes circulate on China’s tightly controlled social media? Studying online political humor as a participatory practice, this article shows that political jokes become viral through a dynamic process of digital meaning making, which I call the repetition of ambivalence. In this process, a joke with ambiguous meanings is repeatedly shared on social media, resulting in not only the viral circulation of ambivalent affect but also the creation of new meanings. While previous research has acknowledged humor’s ambiguity, this study theorizes three distinct forms of ambiguity and ambivalence in political jokes: semantic ambiguity, which destabilizes meaning and invites remixing; discursive boundary trespassing, which challenges the normative boundary of politics; and affective ambivalence, which allows jokes to resonate through mixed and contradictory emotions. I argue that ambivalence emerging from ambiguity is what makes political jokes socially vital, as users continue to engage in jokes to resolve ambivalence, but often end up sustaining it because repetition both repeats and recreates meanings. By foregrounding repetition as a key mechanism in joke circulation, this study provides new insights into how political humor operates in digital environments. These arguments are developed through a case study of COVID-19-related jokes on Chinese social media.