Afraid to Dive

It is no secret that media franchises rule the world. Huge corporations which globalize and monetize art, have come into our life and changed the way we consume mass culture. There are, actually, the smaller companies which try to develop their product by all means, to endow it with a special corporate identity, emphasizing their individuality. Sometimes they also enter the world market if they achieve the necessary level of success, eventually turning their opuses into franchises. However, what generally can be considered a media franchise and is it possible to categorize them? A media franchise is, first of all, a collection of works of various forms of media united by a common entourage and characters. Many of them have a mascot, a symbol or a bright, memorable image that warms the brand and which the company operates to advertise and attract popularity to its product. Obviously, new products are sold better if they are associated with an existing and familiar universe. The pat...

What do you know about the Internet in China? I think that at least it is isolated from the outer web via the Golden Shield Project. It means that the Chinese online culture is different than the Western one, being more hermetic. Thanks to its impermeability, the digital world of China is unique and teeming with distinctive phenomena, and therefore is valuable to research. I have interviewed u/Elmwow who told me about the Chinese memes. Hello! Thank you for agreeing to the interview. First you need to know is that I’m not so far away from you: I’m from Russia, so I will reveal the situation with memes in our country, and there will be some cultural exchange. I hope it will be cool! Sure, me too. So, I'll start from afar: what's up with the Internet in China? You have the Golden Shield Project, including a powerful firewall that forces people to use internal services, right? Something similar to that. We can’t view something like YouTube, Reddit, Twitter etc...