The Joy Of Formal Communication

Niconico-like comment, or the so-called live on-screen commenting, has been of great prevalence in the public since the Japanese anime culture entered China in recent years, which enables numerous people to collaborate in creation. "There are about 50 million subscribers on our site", claimed by Bilibili, the Chinese version of Niconico Douga. This thesis aims to analyze both psychology of audience who watches videos with live on-screen commenting implemented and how the implementation of on-screen commenting affects audience.Based on John Huizinga’s research on the play element of culture and society, Dramaturgy which is developed by Erving Goffman, and author’s interview notes on several anime conventions, the first section of the paper tries to analyze how individuals use and perceive live on-screen commenting function, and argues that individuals put on some kinds of acts while they send on-screen comments on online anime videos.In the second section of the paper, the author compares the experience of live on-screen commenting to a life in a virtual panopticon, and tries to explain how that commenting feature affects audience while they playfully wander in the drugstore (Le Drugstore), in other words, while they watch and send on-screen comments.The third section of the paper shows an example to validate those claims from previous two sections. And the final section of the paper argues that individuals perceive themselves as actors and obtain pleasures while they send and watch on-screen comments which are heavily routinized.