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This paper focuses on international sports personality in figure staking Yuzuru Hanyu, who plays for Japan, and his transnational fandoms in China, to examine the politicisation of his evolving fandom during and after his performance at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Our contribution is to illustrate the value of analysing fandoms in the Chinese social media as a method that seeks to advance a decolonised approach to communication studies. This study uses digital ethnography to collect data and conducts critical thematic analysis to illustrate the complexity of socially mediated fandom debates and flames. Consulting interdisciplinary literature in sports fandom and communication, athletic branding, and political communication, we propose a fresh critical approach to Chinese communication studies, which we have conceptualised as “fandom as method.” We offer a case study to illustrate this critical approach, which we argue is a contribution to decolonising scholarship by promoting inclusivity of alternative approaches, in communication studies in the global south. “Fandom as method” can excavate new terrain, rather than simply adding to West-centric theoretical advances. Findings underscore that critically analysing the complex interplay between fans, anti-fans, and the authorities through “fandom as method” can reveal previously undetected communication patterns. More importantly, fandom as method can help us interrogate the nuances of communications situated within complex, dynamic, evolving patriotic and nationalistic social media discourses. This approach helps to explicate opaque clashes of “mainstremeist belief and action” in the name of patriotism and nationalism which, in the Chinese context, are subject to intervention from the authorities as the ultimate other. It reveals how social media activity politicises a sports personality, a fandom trend that seems likely to spill over into other spheres of the entertainment industry.

Promotional video of a city with its strengths in visual and audio impacts that crystallizes the history, culture and future of it is playing an ever more important role in city branding. Against this backdrop, this study will conduct an empirical examination into such videos of Ningbo, a coastal city in Zhejiang province in China. Guided by the conceptual framework of narrative paradigm in the operationalization of repositioning in city branding in comparison with some successful cases of promotional videos, this study has found that the city’s repositioning branding strives still have many aspects to improve so that its competitive edge, uniformity in positioning, compelling story-telling and uniqueness can be enhanced and improved. Contribution to literature and innovation of the study lies in the incorporation of the method of thematic multimodal discourse analysis into city branding through analyzing visual, audio and textual effects of promotional videos. Significance of this study is that second and lower tier cities such as Ningbo home the bigger population of a country, successful promotion will set a good example for other place brandings and in turn may improve the overall competitiveness of such cities.