Abstract
Studies of reaction media within global networked culture have emphasized the political economy and hegemonic meanings of reaction videos and particularly considered the role of the close-up as creating the meaning of the “reaction.” This article alternatively examines Uncle Roger’s reaction media through a medium-specific and cross-platform perspective, considering both textual and audiovisual image-based reactions, to explore the nuances of reaction media as a meta mode of engagement. Drawing on a case study approach, online observation, and qualitative textual analysis, this research investigates Uncle Roger’s reaction videos and reactions to his content across YouTube, TikTok, Douyin, and Bilibili. By conceptualizing reaction media as a cross-platform practice, we suggest the need for an expanded and more dynamic definition of what constitutes reaction media. We seek to explore reaction media as globalizing social media entertainment that is not only defined by authenticity and community but also by reactivity. This article attempts to interrogate current literature on reaction media built on YouTube reaction videos and contributes to the studies in platformized cultural production and social media entertainment.
Introduction
Reaction videos are a mode of online engagement that possess intermedial continuities with cinema, television, and other forms of mediated engagement on the internet. Reaction videos are one of the popular content genres on YouTube that often contain close-up shots of the reactors/creators and a divided screen showing the content that they react to, enabling the experience of an immersive, earnest, and unambiguous emotional response (Bliss, 2022). Reaction videos have multiple mediatory layers and meta-modes of engagement; they can be reaction videos to other media, as well as reactions to reaction videos and reaction videos to the genre of “reaction” (Bliss & Nansen, 2022). Studies of reaction media within global networked culture have emphasized the political economy and hegemonic meanings of reaction videos and particularly considered the role of the close-up as creating the meaning of the “reaction.” This article examines Uncle Roger’s reaction media as a case study to explore the nuances of reaction media as both content and medium across platforms.
Uncle Roger’s reaction videos are reflective of the generative and playful aspects of reaction in a broader sense and are established via highly interactive and participatory processes that are both top-down and bottom-up. Uncle Roger is a social media persona created by Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng, best known for his reaction videos to British chefs’ attempts at traditional Asian dishes. Uncle Roger’s satirization of the seeming expertise of Western chefs made famous on broadcast television is, like other forms of social media entertainment (SME), a “fully fledged critique of legacy media” (Cunningham & Craig, 2019, p. 155). However, the satirical content, modes of interactions, and audiences cultivated can be brought into conversation with modes of SME defined by authenticity or calibrated amateurism, such as content created by beauty vloggers and gamers (Abidin, 2017; Banet-Weiser, 2017). As his content is shared across diverse cultural and political contexts and distinctive platforms, this article argues that the common purpose of Uncle Roger’s reaction content is not necessarily to transmit the meaning of authentic cuisines and culture, such as to create an appreciation of how egg fried rice should “really” be made but to continue and proliferate reactions among various actors (Nakajima, 2019).
Ng is not a professional cook but an influencer-comedian whose satire exists within the realm of “mediatized foodscapes” (Goodman et al., 2017). To a degree, his content offers a productive critique of the tendency in Western media culture to render different cuisines and cooking practices “strange” (Leer & Kjær, 2015). However, rather than cultivating an idea of “really real” or authentic (Banet-Weiser, 2012) Asian cuisine and cooking practices, Roger’s content is meaningful for cultivating a reactive audience.
While studies of reaction media in global networked culture have emphasized their political economy and hegemonic meanings—particularly the role of YouTube videos and the close-up in producing the “reaction”—this article takes a different approach. Focusing on Uncle Roger, it adopts a medium-specific and cross-platform perspective to examine both textual and audiovisual image-based responses, exploring how reaction media operate as both content and medium. Roger’s satirical reactions do not just exist within the videos created by him but within comments from users, videos created by his fans, videos created by fellow chefs, bullet screen comments, likes, and remakes. Reactions, in this way, can be understood as they work to proliferate more reactions by inciting users, influencers, and objects of his mockery, all of whom also typically seek to incite his reaction in response. In this way, we seek to highlight the friction between content and medium and the incitement to create more reactions.
Through mapping different modes of reactions via a cross-platform analysis of Uncle Roger’s reactions, and reactions to Uncle Roger’s videos, as a case study, we conceptualize reaction media as a cross-platform practice that is both textual and audiovisual image-based. YouTube reaction videos have been particularly studied and conceptualized as meaningful via close-ups of the user’s reaction (Bliss & Nansen, 2022); however, reaction media are equally found in comments, hashtags, tags, and video titles that seek to incite another reaction. Thus, we consider how reactions are bound to specific platform practices while also being dependent on different patterns of content flow and circulation within and across culturally different platforms. By understanding Uncle Roger’s reactions as cross-platform practice, we suggest the need for an expanded and more dynamic definition of what constitutes reaction media and seek to explore reaction media as a mode of globalizing SME, not only defined by twinned discourses of authenticity and community (Cunningham & Craig, 2019), but also by reaction as a meta mode of engagement. Using friction (Tsing, 2011) and cross-platform flow as the conceptual framework, we investigate Uncle Roger’s videos shared on the US-based platform YouTube, the short video app TikTok that operates in an international market, and mainland China-based video services including Douyin and Bilibili.
Literature review
Reaction media provide for the pleasure of documenting one’s emotions, and immersing oneself in others’ reactions, and are meaningful for their demonstrations of excessive and exaggerated self-consciousness, where users do nothing beyond being reactive (Kim, 2015). Reaction media, in which a user watches another user reacting to something, with the reaction appearing to occur in “real time,” brings creation, consumption, and original text into the same frame. Reaction media are forms of platformized cultural production (Nieborg & Poell, 2018) and require online interactions for community building and the self-presentation of authentic and immersive reactions to bridge the distance between creators and audiences. However, reaction media have been more frequently analyzed via discrete frameworks, particularly via audience reception studies, political economy, or textual analysis and studies are generally limited to reaction videos on YouTube (Bliss & Nansen, 2022). Relevant to our case study is previous scholarship on cultural difference and transnational reception in YouTube reaction videos. For example, Kim (2015) has critically analyzed YouTube reaction videos to K-pop music videos by American, most often white, vloggers, arguing that they essentially commodify and exploit users, who perform the free labor “of being watched” (Andrejevic in Kim, 2015), thus limiting their political potential. Swan conversely argues that reaction videos to K-pop videos are powerful tools of “creative intervention” that “resists the reproduction of Eurocentric ideologies in the digital realm through individuals’ uses of voice and visibility” (Swan, 2018, p. 552). YouTube reaction videos to K-pop videos can enable distinct K-pop fan cultures, blurring lines between reception and production, as well as the labor of production, branding, and authenticity (Kim, 2015; Oh, 2017; Swan, 2018). Taking a positive perspective toward the political economy of global media culture, this view sees reaction videos as offering the potential to decenter Western hegemonic power and provide the means of “escape from fixed identities that helps to level global power” (Oh, 2017, p. 2282) to ensure diverse and dynamic reception of diverse cultures and K-pop music.
Nonetheless, while reaction content is defined by “watching people watching people watching” (Anderson, 2011), with YouTube arguably the originator of the reaction video, it is important not to overlook how likes, shares, comments, posts, and other textual modes of online participation are all valuable forms of reaction. In other words, textual reactions, as well as image-based reactions, typically close-ups of exaggerated facial expressions, are all modes of reaction. This article therefore refers to reaction media, rather than reaction videos, to ensure the dynamic aspects of user engagement, beyond YouTube, are fully considered. Platform economies depend on widespread and continuous engagement; thus, reaction media are exemplary of how social media engagement is less valuable for content shared and exchanged than for “the reaction it has elicited in the network” (Brighenti, 2019, p. 208). In this sense, reaction media are less meaningful for the “meaning” of the reaction that is being demonstrated than for the strategies or expressions of reactivity that they promote. Beyond an analysis of Uncle Roger as creating either “good” or “bad,” inclusive or exclusionary, modes of cultural expression and representation (Couldry, 2004), we argue that there is no single hegemonic figure or mode of “authenticity” that is issued by Roger’s reaction content. Roger’s content provides a useful case study for exploring reaction content across platforms, the dynamic and shifting terrain of meaning within networked culture, and for offering an expanded conceptualization of the role of reaction media within the globalizing SME.
Reaction media are an expression of “platform vernacular” (Gibbs et al., 2015), the shared conventions and grammars of communication that emerge from the interactions between particular platform affordances and users. As the migration of platform vernaculars brings new mediated practices via the specificities of the platform, its material architecture, and users’ collective cultural practices (Gibbs et al., 2015), it is worth examining the flow of platform vernaculars by bringing in a comparative lens to study reaction media across platforms. While Uncle Roger’s reactions satirize Western exoticization of East and Southeast Asian food, his reception within Chinese platforms suggests a dynamic meaning of reaction. Exploring Roger’s content across platforms, his content exists within a wider media practice of reaction media marked by its instability of meaning, a degree of antagonism and ambivalence (Phillips & Milner, 2018), and proliferation of content. Here, friction and flow are concepts that help highlight the dynamic relationships between Roger’s reaction videos, reactions to Roger’s content, and reactions that seek to elicit Roger’s reaction. While flow was originally used to conceptualize broadcast television and the insulated relationship between content, production, and consumption bound together by programs, advertisements, television schedules, and timing, flow has been expanded to think through the patterns of content and circulation on digital platforms (Gibbs et al., 2015). “Friction” is the opposing term used by Tsing (2011) to conceptualize the instability, awkwardness, and generative aspects of global networked connections, and by Couldry (2012) to understand the dynamic and complex relationship between audience, media, and world. Taken together, friction and flow help show the instability of meaning and ambivalence in Roger’s reactive media.
Reaction videos are typed as inherently authentic, as vloggers appear to be reacting in real time to another video, with close-ups of facial expressions conveying a sense of immediacy and realness (Bliss & Nansen, 2022). However, rather than suggest that reaction media are expressions within an online field determined by political economy or hegemonic ideologies of cultural difference, reaction media is best viewed as a type of platform-dependent media practice. In media studies, the concept of media practice emerges from Couldry, who sought to more holistically view and traverse the “holy trinity” (Couldry, 2004) of production, text, and consumption in media analysis (Ostertag, 2020). Focus on media practices, Couldry suggests, could allow for an open-ended, dynamic, and relational approach that avoided over-determining the significance of theory, and the functionalism that can be created by discrete analytic frameworks in audience reception, textual analysis, and political economy methodologies. Practice, he suggests, provides a useful point of tension or “friction” (Couldry, 2012) for understanding the range of possible uses and meanings in media-saturated cultures where there are no clear distinctions between media and “world.” Practice, in this way, helps to overcome “the instinct to theorise media in the abstract” (Couldry, 2012, p. 107). Indeed, Couldry particularly noted a tendency in media studies to view theory as an end as well as a means, provocatively writing that “Media theory has no independent value as theory; it is valuable only when it helps us formulate better questions for empirical research” (Couldry, 2004, p. 123). Understanding reaction media as practice, in this respect, allows for an open-ended exploration of different uses of media, and a rich description of what people are “doing in relation to media” (Couldry, 2004, p. 116) not determined by assumptions embedded within established theories. Reaction media, we argue, forms a practice, as there are frictions in the meanings of reaction media within and across platforms. We argue that reaction media are not a semiotic “unit” with an inherent meaning nor able to be illuminated by a specific or discrete theoretical framework; rather, reaction media contain multiple meanings that reflect Couldry’s notion of media practice.
Through a lens of social theory, Couldry’s notion of “media-related practice” is concerned with regularity of action, which is social and points to human needs (Couldry, 2012, pp. 61–62). But what is missing here is the discussion of the role digital technologies play in media practice. As cultural production is increasingly dependent on digital platforms (Nieborg & Poell, 2018), our study of reaction media also considers the idea of “platform practice” in the cultural industries, which researchers define as “the strategies, routines, experiences, and expressions of creativity, labor, and citizenship that shape cultural production through platforms” (Duffy et al., 2019, p. 2). Popular social media influencers practice “staged authenticity,” establishing authenticity through the interactive representations of an intimate and private self, using strategies to generate a sense of commonality with fans and audiences (Hou, 2019, p. 548; Marwick, 2013). For example, Ng’s authenticity can be found in the way he cultivates an audience across platforms via consistent self-presentation (Khamis et al., 2017) and satirization of stereotypes; he always wears the same orange polo shirt, uses an exaggerated Cantonese-English accent, and calls himself “Uncle” to resonate with East and Southeast Asian audiences. Authenticity can be linked to the idea of “calibrated amateurism” (Abidin, 2017), which shows the close relations between the practice of crafting contrived authenticity and audience engagement. Calibrated amateurism refers to the performance of the raw aesthetic of an amateur, leaving the impression of spontaneity, unfilteredness, and relatability to appeal to viewers. Scholars tend to assume that creators aim to establish consistency in their “authentic” image across platforms (Banet-Weiser, 2021; Khamis et al., 2017); however, while authenticity has been considered as a discourse (Cunningham & Craig, 2019) and adhering to an “endless feedback loop” (Banet-Weiser, 2021, p. 142), there are notable differences across platforms in the type of content created by influencers (Miltsov, 2022), which can be seen in the way Uncle Roger strategizes and expresses his reaction, the reactions issued in response by users and influencer chefs, and how the affordances and constraints of digital platforms limit and enable these reactions and interactions.
Addressing limitations in cross-platform research of content and lack of focus on the way that different platform affordances “lead to diverse social, cultural and political outcomes” (Miltsov, 2022, p. 5), this article considers how SME is not purely structured by authenticity and community but by interactivity and reactivity (Cunningham & Craig, 2019, p. 13). Within the online industry, “reacting” is a core SME format that can cultivate intimacy between creators and their community and operates as a way of opening dialogues between creators/reactors and viewers. In other words, “a dialogic relationship” (Cunningham & Craig, 2019, p. 155) between the creator, the fan base, and the platform is established, a relationship that we argue contains the common purpose of encouraging and producing ongoing communication or more reaction content.
Using Uncle Roger as a case study, we ask the following research questions:
RQ1. How can we define reaction media as platform-dependent media practice?
RQ1b. How do reaction videos shared on Chinese SME compare with content shared on YouTube and TikTok?
RQ2. How does reaction media/videos flow across platforms?
Methodology
This research draws on a cross-platform case study approach, online observation, and qualitative textual analysis on selected reaction media content. It focuses on a case study of Uncle Roger’s reactions as an example of a small-data approach that provides close and detailed analysis that can contextualize the exchange and meanings of reaction videos. Our cross-platform approach pays attention to reaction videos and platform affordances on multiple social media services. Cross-platform analysis requires sensitivity to user cultures and medium, and one should not treat affordances such as “hashtags” and “likes” as the same across social media services, because of different platform vernaculars (Rogers, 2019, p. 360). Our approach considers multiple layers of “cross” and operationalizes the notion of reaction by focusing on specific affordances of different platforms. We analyzed the aesthetic features and techniques that were used by Uncle Roger and afforded by platforms to create and shape an appearance of immediacy and authenticity in his reaction videos.
Through a cross-platform lens (Meng and Nansen, 2022), we draw on a case study of reactions related to Uncle Roger. We do not offer a large-scale quantitative analysis of different reactions by or to Roger to achieve a representational analysis. Rather, we narrowed our focus, conducted online observation of Roger’s channels, and qualitative textual analysis on four key videos posted across platforms. Our purpose is to conceptualize how reaction media form a platform-dependent media practice. Large-scale quantitative studies defined by an interest in Big Data tend to dominate studies of social media, yet some scholars also recognize the value of “small data” as a close reading strategy to understand the interactions of a particular user group and the contexts where communication takes place (boyd & Crawford, 2012). In some cases, focusing on a single individual could be valuable as it is tailored to answer specific research questions (boyd & Crawford, 2012). We adopt such a small-data approach by using purposive sampling to better understand the subtleties, complexities, and richness in various forms of reactions and the practice of contexts in which reactions by Uncle Roger and reactions to his content operate. Our analysis paid attention to the video content and the multiple layers surrounding it, including platform architecture, video titles, hashtags, descriptions, view counts, and audience comments. As we show, when reaction media cross platforms and cultures, their meanings shift and multiply. This dynamic highlights how cultures are co-produced through interaction. In digital spaces, reaction media can not only create tension or resistance but also show surprising and unexpected reactions (such as Bilibili users reacting in support of Western chefs Oliver and Ramsay). Such reactions embody the productive friction central to reaction media and demonstrate how reactions are both content and medium, as ultimately they produce more reactions.
In our initial online observation conducted between August 2022 and November 2022, we started by using keywords such as “reaction” in both English and Chinese to seek relevant content on Bilibili, Douyin, and TikTok. We found a diverse range of reaction videos under the search results. In this initial phase, we took down observational notes while watching a wide range of reaction content and people’s online activities. Then, we narrowed down our sampling to focus on Uncle Roger’s reaction videos as they spread across Chinese and US-based platforms. We believe Uncle Roger’s reaction content is a useful case for cross-platform analysis. The selected case study not only fits within the mode of reaction media but also is situated in food media or “mediatized foodscape” (Goodman et al., 2017), which allows us to control the sampling of content genre while examining dynamic reactions. In addition, Uncle Roger’s videos also attracted his fans and other creators to react to his content, showing interactions among various actors. Our goal is not to use Roger’s content to represent a typical case of reaction media or to conceptualize a global definition of reaction videos across platforms but to show cross-cultural reactions on different platforms and markets and analyze how friction and flow were created.
We began by using the keywords “Uncle Roger reaction” and noted the different types of reactions by and to Roger’s content. Apart from Roger’s content, we found that chef influencers who typically formed the object of his derision or praise also produced multiple videos. Similarly, we found that fans created videos that reacted to Roger’s content, produced subtitled videos in different languages and reuploaded Roger’s videos to their own channels with retitling or subtle changes. As we located an array of content, we found that both established chefs and ordinary users were not simply capitalizing on Roger’s success, monetizing views while also extending his reach; they also added to the “proliferation of communication” (Nakajima, 2019) that is at the heart of reaction as a cross-platform practice. Narrowing the search, we selected four videos from four key platforms using purposive sampling methods, while continuing online observation on Uncle Roger’s social media accounts from November 2022 to June 2023. The rationales for considering these services were to compare the diverse platform types that operate in different markets, including video-sharing services (Bilibili and YouTube) and short video apps (Douyin and TikTok) (Table 1).
Brief information on the selective platforms.
Exploring and comparing content across these four platforms allowed us to better observe reaction media as a practice and examine the patterns shared in a cross-platform context. By locating our focus on one representative video on each platform, we tracked the cross-platform flow of reaction media, and closely analyzed reaction expressions within videos, and comments to videos to gain an in-depth understanding of how reactions and meanings travel across platforms and cultures.
The four videos (see Table 2) were selected for a closer qualitative textual analysis as they demonstrated meaningful friction. Anna Tsing (2011, p. 4) describes “friction” in the global connection as “the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference.” Friction is the grip of encounter that could lead to new arrangements of culture and power (Tsing, p. 5). Here, we selected videos that showed friction via reactions that created a sense of ambivalence and/or antagonism, which served to fuel further online interactions.
Key videos for qualitative textual analysis.
Nigel Ng’s Bilibili and Douyin accounts were first suspended in May 2023 and were later banned by the sites. Thus, the links to the Bilibili and Douyin videos are no longer available.
Although our analysis was primarily based on a small sampling of representative videos on each platform, our focus was not limited to these four videos. We also compared the same video posted on another platform and traced online interactions via the flow of further reactions in the form of reactive comments, reuploads, or videos across platforms. Our comparative study of reactions by Roger and reactions to Uncle Roger’s content by other users and influencers does not intend to be exhaustive but seeks to expose how reactions proliferate via friction and the dynamic meanings that ensue.
Cross-platform analysis on creator practices has drawn more attention in recent years; however, research is often centered on Western and US-based platforms. Scholars call to study Chinese platforms as a method to de-westernize and re-regionalize platform studies, which has the potential to build up platform studies theoretically (Davis & Xiao, 2021; Wang & Lobato, 2019). Furthermore, as reaction is a distinctly antagonistic and ambivalent mode of engagement, this study can contribute to a greater understanding of SME beyond authenticity. Ambivalence means that reactions are often not in true dialogue with one another, but are instead contradictory and conflicting (Phillips & Milner, 2018), meaning that it is difficult to conceptualize or form a rational sense of what is “authentic” about cooking practices or idea of Asian food culture being reacted to. Here, focusing on different forms of reaction media across Chinese and US-based platforms with a cross-cultural view, this research can add a more dynamic view of online engagement.
In the following discussions, we present findings from our analysis, and each section is for answering each research question. We start by addressing how reaction media shows a form of platform-dependent media practice in the coming section.
RQ1: reaction media as a cross-platform practice
Both text and image play a role in shaping proliferative dialogue in reactions across platforms. YouTube, which is the original platform Roger found success on, has been regarded for its cinematic qualities (Vernallis, 2013), as well as its intermediality and instability as an object of analysis (Burgess & Green, 2009); however, much focus has been made of its slogan to “Broadcast yourself” and the ensuing culture of commodified authenticity and individuality (Cunningham & Craig, 2019). On YouTube, as well as other platforms like TikTok and Douyin where Uncle Roger’s reaction videos widely circulate, “close-ups” of the face are particularly important to creating a sense of authenticity. Close-ups issue a sense of intimacy and an overcoming of distance between spectator and screen (Casetti, 2020); however, the original theory of close-ups assumes a cinema audience, who are connected in space and time within a traditional, auditorium setting (Bliss & Nansen, 2022; Doane, 2021). In the case of reaction content, close-ups of Roger as well as text-based comments become a visible part of the original text. As reaction content proliferates on YouTube, TikTok, Bilibili, and Douyin, such as where fans react to Uncle Roger’s reaction, subtitle his original videos with added comments, or “react” to them via danmu comments on Bilibili, the meaning of the reaction becomes dynamic and unstable.
Examining four videos across the respective platforms, reaction media contain sometimes surprising meanings that show some of the “redistribution” of power engendered by platformized cultural production (Duffy et al., 2019), while also revealing the limits of capturing that power as adhering to continuous logics. For example, in Sample 3, British chef Gordon Ramsey incites Uncle Roger in a video first shared on YouTube, which was reacted by Roger in another video posted on Bilibili. Ramsey’s YouTube video is titled “Gordan Ramsey Makes Asian Inspired Street Food Noodles” (Ramsey, 2022), whereas the video title of Roger’s Bilibili version seeks to incite a reaction against Ramsey “Hell’s Chef called out Uncle Roger publicly! Can a Nasi Goreng dish win him back his Uncle title?” (UncleRogerNigelNg, 2022a). In the YouTube video, which has attracted 934,000 views, Ramsey elicits Uncle Roger’s reaction by claiming his dish is more authentic “I’ve been to Indonesia more times than Uncle Roger!” Roger’s reaction, shared on Bilibili, as well as YouTube and TikTok, mocks Ramsay for his use of Japanese Udon noodles in an Indonesian dish. However, on Bilibili, the most “liked” user comment is in praise Gordon Ramsey. The user suggests Ramsey counters Uncle Roger’s satire with a calm demeanor and cooking style, saying how it is different from “the olive oil chef” Jamie Oliver’s attitude. The comment in praise of Ramsey, as well as other danmu comments such as “noodles looking good although not so Indonesian” that fly across the screen on Bilibili show how content travels across platforms in novel or unexpected ways, which suggests a need to use Couldry’s call to understand media as a practice to avoid assuming meaning can be captured by textual, audience reception, and political economic frameworks.
Roger’s reaction to Ramsey’s cooking video—taken at face value—with the user comment on Bilibili in praise of his style demonstrates that there is not necessarily a singular discourse, such as the Western exoticization of Asian food, being opposed or undermined in reactions generated by and to Uncle Roger. Instead, reactions cultivate an ongoing and proliferative dialogue that only fuels further reactions.
Much research has focused on the ability of platforms to offer a field for “mass empowerment” and “diversity in cultural producers in terms of gender, sexual identity, race, ethnicity, age, and social class/location” (Duffy et al., 2019, p. 4). Roger’s reactions are, however, often acerbic and often directly antagonistic. Antagonistic humor is a common feature of social media platforms, online forums, and internet culture more broadly (Phillips & Milner, 2018). Antagonistic humor is defined by its creation of an us-versus-them or insiders-and-outsiders, logic, where those on the inside making fun of another group. However, as Phillips and Milner (2018) note, online spaces are not only defined by cultures of antagonism but also by their inherent instability. Thus, antagonism can often be inherently ambivalent, as “insiders can become outsiders, and outsiders can become insiders” (Phillips & Milner, 2018, p. 169). This can be further shown in Sample 2, how Roger mocks a man who tries to order “halal pork” in the TikTok video uploaded by a fan, which contains a laughing face emoji in reaction to the naïve man thinking pork can be halal (ayeshren, 2022). The joke arguably relies on the assumption that the man who is ordering is Muslim; Roger’s mockery of his naïve order shows that he is not simply undermining Western discourses of food culture but creating an ambivalence where all “insiders” can become outsiders.
Similarly, in Sample 1, Roger’s mocking reaction to British woman Kay, who hosts the YouTube channel “Kay’s cooking,” also shows the ambivalence and instability of meaning within reaction content. In “Uncle Roger SHOCKED by worst fried rice video (Kay’s cooking)” (mrnigelng, 2020c) shared on YouTube, Uncle Roger reacts to an everyday British woman, Kay, naively serving her son a dish of uncooked rice and burned garlic. Roger is aware of the possibility that his reaction will incite trolls to react to Kay’s earnest attempt by mocking her, as he repeatedly reminds his “nieces and nephews” at the start of the video not to troll. Roger’s reactions—characterized by mockery and satire of anyone from elite chefs to everyday amateurs like Kay—are not purely political satire; rather, reactions operate as creative “frictions” to create more reactions.
Our findings suggest that reaction media is a cross-platform practice for proliferating online communication via diverse modes of reactions, which are enabled by text and audiovisual image-based content dependent on platform cultures and affordances. When reactions flow across channels and platforms, meanings become ambivalent and unstable, yet they serve as creative frictions to generate further responses and reactions among audiences and creators. In the next section, we move on to address the inquiry on comparing the reaction videos shared on Chinese SME, YouTube, and TikTok, and exploring how cross-platform circulation constitutes the practice for proliferating communication.
RQ1b: practice on Chinese SME compared to YouTube and TikTok
When international YouTubers like Uncle Roger enter Chinese social media, the common practice is to repackage their already viral content and translate it into Mandarin to cater to the Chinese audience. We observed that Roger and his team also made some efforts in producing localized content targeting the Chinese market, such as some videos where Roger speaks in Mandarin and greets his Chinese viewers. Yet, it appeared that the videos shared on Chinese social media were only a small portion of his entire content pool on YouTube. Roger’s videos shared on Chinese SME are more selected, only posting the ones that contain elements that could prompt interactions with Chinese viewers. These videos are more curated with burned-in subtitles in both English and Simplified Chinese, making his videos targeting Western viewers more appealing to the audience on China-based platforms. The attempt to curate content was to generate engagement with Chinese viewers and to ensure that Roger’s content would not trigger content moderation under the strict platform regulation.
Roger’s virality across US-based platforms and TikTok also helped with his popularity on Chinese platforms. Some Chinese viewers reuploaded Roger’s YouTube videos to their channels on Bilibili and volunteered to translate English content into Chinese in a style that fits Bilibili’s platform vernaculars. Meanwhile, viewers also contributed additional information or engaged with Roger’s mocking reaction through bullet screen comments, or “danmu” in Mandarin, a key feature that Bilibili is known for.
We consider viewers’ danmu comments to contribute to a form of reaction media practice on Chinese social media. Just as YouTube reaction videos have characterized as distinctly “American” (Anderson, 2011), danmu comments have been conceptualized via a culturally specific lens of collectivism, stereotypical of Chinese and Japanese culture related to the power of the crowd and the need for anonymity (Wan et al., 2020). And thus, they are in contrast to reaction videos shared on YouTube and TikTok, which are understood as performed authenticity, typical of Western, individualistic culture, and dependent on close-ups of intensified facial expressions (Oh, 2017).
On Bilibili, users can post comments that scroll directly over the top of the original, and danmu comments that can be anchored to specific time markers to emphasize a sense of immediacy. Danmu comments, as the affordance of social presence that marks a key difference in Chinese SME from its Western counterpart (Craig et al., 2021, p. 77), provide unique technical and cultural advantages for generating reactions, which also resonates with our finding on reaction media as a practice for proliferating online communication. We focus on “how” people communicate via reaction as a practice, rather than emphasizing or arguing for coherence in any potential political implications, meanings, or effects.
On YouTube, the aesthetic features and techniques used by Uncle Roger and afforded by platforms work to create and shape an appearance of immediacy and authenticity in his reaction videos. YouTube and Bilibili both enable longer videos with larger file sizes, and the cinematic 16:9 ratio of videos ensures Uncle Roger can create an engaging and immersive reaction to a lengthy cooking sequence from broadcast television. On TikTok and Douyin, the limitation of videos to a smartphone ratio, as well as the algorithmic flow of seemingly random content, means more reaction videos focus on collaboration and community over Uncle Roger’s reactions to broadcast content; however, the popularity of the original video shared on YouTube informs or frames his later popularity on other platforms, as some of the content shared on TikTok and Douyin are edited versions of longer YouTube clips.
For instance, Sample 4 on Douyin is a clip that edits together shots from the YouTube video titled “Uncle Roger HATE Jamie Oliver Thai Green Curry” (mrnigelng, 2021). The YouTube video is around 13 minutes and shows Roger’s reaction to Oliver’s cooking process from making rice to taste testing the finished product. Sample 4 on Douyin, which was also posted on TikTok, is a 21-second clip taken from the original video, focusing on Roger’s main criticism of Oliver (namely, that he cooks only one cup of rice for four people). This clip has been edited into an up-and-down split screen to fit the short video app’s viewing culture, which is different from the original YouTube video with a left-and-right division. In the Douyin video, there are subtitles in both English and Chinese that appear in the middle of the screen. While including close-ups of Oliver’s cooking and Roger’s reactions, there are two images added to the video. One is a picture of newborn birds, functioning as an image reference when Roger satirically questions if Oliver’s family is a group of baby birds and whether one cup of rice is enough. Another image used in the video shows the record-winning runner, Usain Bolt, referring to Oliver screwing things up 8 seconds in the video. Here, reactions include close-up shots of Roger’s face, as well as images and texts. Roger’s sarcastic reaction is amplified through the use of image references and bilingual subtitles.
Compared with videos posted on YouTube and TikTok, the content production on Douyin shows the platform-specific and culturally-specific strategy for targeting Chinese audiences. Douyin and TikTok are owned by the same company, ByteDance, but they are considered two separate apps and operate in “parallel platformization,” sharing similar features but differing in infrastructure, governance, and market (Kaye et al., 2021). Due to the shared features between the two apps, users can repackage a TikTok video and distribute it on Douyin, and vice versa. Here, in Uncle Roger’s case, Sample 4 was originally posted on TikTok with the description “Jamie Oliveoil: One cup rice for four people 
#uncleroger #jamieoliver” (mrnigelng, 2022). The same video was later posted on Douyin, which contains bilingual burned-in subtitles and video descriptions in Chinese that have more detailed information and culturally specific references. Using “British chef” and “foreigner” to replace the pun “Jamie Oliveoil,” which not only resonates with Chinese audiences on Douyin but also separates “us” (Chinese) from “them” (the Western chef Oliver), the video posted on Douyin appears to create an insider dialogue with Chinese viewers. The Douyin caption welcomes Chinese viewers to reflect and comment on the proper way of cooking rice. The affordance of social presence in Chinese SME, including social commenting such as Bilibili’s danmu comments or videos shared on Douyin, provides a unique advantage for reaction media to gain traction, encouraging interactivity and deepening the connectivity between the creator and the viewers.
Yet, despite the clear antagonistic message, the comments under this Douyin video take a turn in support of Jamie Oliver, showing the ambivalence of reaction media. The most-liked comment says that “But his (Oliver’s) one cup is a mug,” with the comment implying that the mug is a large enough measurement of rice for a family. Other comments express similar ideas, and some discuss how many people Oliver’s cup could actually feed. The unexpected viewer reactions in Douyin comments echo the previously discussed case of the Roger and Ramsay video on YouTube and Bilibili. Uncle Roger and his team adopted a culturally specific approach to repackage his content to target the Chinese market, as an attempt to make the flow of reaction media smoother. Yet, when reaction media travels across platforms and cultures, its meanings become dynamic and unstable, proliferating further reactions. The surprising turn of comments on Chinese platforms shows that cultures are consistently co-produced in the interactions. Creative friction is enabled by Uncle Roger’s reaction to Oliver, as well as the Chinese audience’s commentary on this video posted on Douyin. In the digital space, reaction media proliferates via flow and friction. The purpose of reactions may create conflicts or resistance to cultural diversity or fuel the dialogic relationship among different actors. Reactions are productive friction that fits the logic of interactivity and reactivity in SME.
RQ2: cross-platform flow of reaction media
Friction is created through cultural antagonism and online interactions among creators and viewers, whereas cross-platform flow of reaction media is enabled by platform features and content distribution practice across Chinese and US-based services. Compared with TikTok and Douyin’s well-established short-form vertical video culture, YouTube and Bilibili are known for their longer-form, horizontal content. Yet the generic categorization of short video apps and video-sharing services cannot fully capture platform dynamics in recent years, as YouTube and Bilibili introduced features for sharing short-form content while TikTok and Douyin allowed 10-minute videos. Despite platform features tending to be the same, Roger’s channels on Chinese and US-based platforms present different cultures of use. The strategy of content distribution tended to prioritize the main channels with the largest audience base. Chinese services served as subsidiary platforms where reaction videos were more selected and curated. In other words, the pattern of cross-platform flow identified here is starting from the platforms targeting international markets and then moving to a more niche and localized context, such as the Chinese market.
The Uncle Roger character was first introduced in short-form videos on TikTok and Instagram in June 2020. The first long-form video featuring Roger reacting to egg fried rice for BBC Food was posted on YouTube on July 8, 2020 (mrnigelng, 2020b). Six days later, a short clip cut from the YouTube video was posted on TikTok and Instagram with texts encouraging viewers to check the link in Roger’s profile and watch the full video on YouTube. An egg fried rice video with Chinese subtitles was posted on Weibo and Douyin on July 30, 2020, followed by Roger’s announcement that he officially joined these Chinese platforms. In January 2021, he established channels on Bilibili and the social media and e-commerce platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book or RedNote).
There is a clear pattern of flow in Roger’s experimentation with content on existing platforms and cross-promotion of videos and channels, which is a strategy and a norm for influencers for cross-platform self-branding (Abidin, 2018). Once a video goes viral and a channel gains high visibility, the creator expands the brand and joins new platforms to attract more audiences. If apps such as TikTok and Instagram were where Uncle Roger character started, then YouTube would be a place where Roger has more flexibility to produce long-form content. As the YouTube channel continues to gain followers, it also facilitates the growth of Roger’s accounts on other platforms. Nigel Ng says in an Instagram post, when the egg fried rice video went viral across platforms and around the world, it blew up all his social media accounts, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, 9gag, and Weibo, and his YouTube subscribers increased from 10,000 to 100,000 in a week (mrnigelng, 2020a). When the personal brand is well-known internationally, it has the potential to expand to more localized markets, such as Chinese platforms that are dominated by Chinese-speaking cultures and fueled by China’s digital economy.
Cross-platform content production often requires creators to curate online performance to maintain a consistent and authentic online identity that does not confuse audiences across social media services (Meng & Nansen, 2022). Creators also need to carefully govern their online practices to avoid content being censored in an industry that is regulated by the Chinese state (Craig et al., 2021). As the state has ideological concerns, the governance of cultural production and creative labor in China is not only repressive but also productive and processive (J. Lin, 2023, p. 15). International creators like Uncle Roger, if wanting to keep a presence on Chinese platforms, cannot circumvent the stringent internet censorship.
In 2023, a video clip from Nigel Ng’s standup comedy show led to the suspension and ban of his accounts on Chinese social media due to the “violation of relevant laws and regulations” (Cai, 2023; C. H. Lin & Davidson, 2023). Although that video clip was not shared on Chinese services, there is a clear friction that restricts him from posting anything on Chinese social media. He reacted to the incident in a video titled “Uncle Roger vs. China, How NOT To Get Cancelled And The Fake Chef?,” asking people to support free speech and check his comedy show, which only generated further reactions to his cancelation (two/thirds, 2023). In a way, the friction of getting censored on the Chinese internet becomes the fuel for generating more reactions on US-based platforms and TikTok, and even received attention from mainstream media. Reaction went beyond the territory of SME and became a cross-media phenomenon.
Cross-platform content flow is not a one-way form of distribution but a multi-directional and fluid process. In Roger’s case, TikTok and Instagram were the original platforms for Nigel Ng to perform the character. But rather than creating platform-specific content for TikTok and Instagram Reels, these services now function as subsidiary platforms for sharing reaction sketches selected from long-form videos on YouTube. Roger’s fans also contribute to this process of circulating reactions, reacting to Uncle Roger or reuploading clips taken from his YouTube videos. Despite the friction that Ng’s accounts on Chinese social media were banned in 2023, his videos are still being circulated on Chinese platforms owing to his fans’ participatory practice of reuploading reaction videos. Chinese platforms’ lack of regulation on the “content transfer” phenomenon, or the legally and ethically questionable activities of transferring or replicating content across platforms (Su & Kaye, 2023), leaving some room for individuals to circulate Uncle Roger’s videos across platforms. Here, we can see that Nigel Ng and his team, who are the original content producers and account managers, his fans, other viewers, and platforms both contribute to the cross-platform flow, continuing and proliferating communication.
Conclusion
In this article, we have used Uncle Roger reaction videos as a case study to examine the role of friction and flow in reaction media across YouTube, TikTok, Douyin, and Bilibili. By situating reaction media in the studies of SME and platform-based cultural production, we argue that reaction media operated as a cross-platform practice for the common purpose of continuing and proliferating communication. When reaction media travels across platforms and cultures, the meanings become fractured, unstable, and ambivalent, due to the diversity of platform features, vernaculars, and audience responses. Although creators often adopt platform-specific strategies for targeting culturally diverse audiences, such as using bilingual subtitles to make sure that meanings would not get lost in different contexts, cross-platform distribution of reaction media is not always frictionless. But rather, cross-platform reaction media functions as productive friction that welcomes creative interpretations, which can fuel the dialogic relationship among different actors, proliferating the interactivity and reactivity. This kind of productive friction can drive motion and online engagement, but careful controls are needed for self-curating the cultural production to make sure that friction does not turn into conflict, abusive reactions, or trolling.
The dynamic and proliferative meanings of reaction, inclusive of videos, comments, danmu, emoji reactions, mean that no sense of authentic culture or cuisine is created, even if videos gesture to or suggest that such an authentic culture exists. Reaction media is inherently ambivalent, often ironic, contradictory. Reaction media is perhaps demonstrative of the lack of rational discourse online and the drive to subversion and epistemological conflict in online spaces (boyd, 2018). However, rather than “behavioural, tonal and aesthetic” (Phillips & Milner, 2018, p. 8), we have argued that reactions are linked to platform vernaculars and the cross-platform flow of content, where reactions work to fuel a proliferation of communication rather than meaningful or rational exchange.
This article looks at an in-between space among Chinese services that are in a majorly monolingual environment (Bilibili and Douyin), and TikTok that operates in an international market, and the US-based service YouTube. This research has contributed to existing cross-platform research through a novel case study of reaction media, extending current knowledge in SME structured by reactivity and beyond authenticity. This article has also advanced the understanding of reaction media by contextualizing it in a cross-cultural, cross-platform environment and looking at textual elements and affordances that shaped different types of practices. The limitation of this research lies in the controlled small sampling, as the case presented here only focuses on reaction videos related to one influencer in the food genre. Further studies might investigate other types of reaction media and copyright infringement of reaction videos under platform governance as reactions flow across platforms and countries.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author biographies
References