ABSTRACT
Chai Jing’s Under the Dome: Investigating China’s Smog presents an unprecedented model of how a multimedia documentary can turn an environmental crisis into a dynamic media event that achieves mass virality. The “going viral” came about because of the interplay between unconventional multimedia documentary modes and an extensive digital network characterized by a large number of users resorting to various technologies. While the rhetorical persuasion built upon multimedia assets encouraged viewers to interact with or navigate through the story of an environmentally alarming reality, the digital media enabled citizens alerted to deadly environmental conditions to tap into a channel of green discussion and diverse voices. The irony of the film’s initial virality provoking its short-lived circulation reveals once again the brute fact of media censorship and social-political constraints. In a polluted landscape and manipulated virtual space, open discussions and investigative exposures of environmental problems remain political and controversial.
