Zhang, Leticia TianCassany, Daniel2020-10-012020-10-012020Zhang LT, Cassany D. Making sense of danmu: coherence in massive anonymous chats on Bilibili.com. Discourse Stud. 2020;22(4):483–502. DOI: 10.1177/14614456209400511461-4456http://hdl.handle.net/10230/45368Although coherence has been widely studied in computer-mediated communication (CMC), insufficient attention has been paid to emergent multimodal forms. This study analyzes a popular commentary system on Chinese and Japanese video-sharing sites – known as danmu or danmaku – where anonymous comments are superimposed on and scroll across the video frame. Through content and multimodal discourse analysis, we unpack danmu-mediated communication analyzing the newest interface (on Bilibili.com), the comments, the interpersonal interactions and the unusual use of the second-person pronoun. Results show that despite the technological constraints (hidden authorship, unmarked sending date and lack of options to structure comments), users construct order in interactions through repetition, danmu-specific expressions and multimodal references, while using playful language to make fun. This study provides an up-to-date analysis on an increasingly popular CMC medium beyond well-studied social networking sites, and broadens the understanding of coherence in contemporary CMC.application/pdfengZhang LT, Cassany D, Making sense of danmu: coherence in massive anonymous chats on Bilibili.com, Discourse Studies (volume 22 number 4) pp. 483–502. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). DOI: 10.1177/1461445620940051. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1461445620940051Barrage subtitlesBullet commentsChinese social mediaCohesionCollaborative video annotationComputer-mediated communicationConversationDanmakuDigital discourseFan studiesMultimodal discourse analysisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess