One of the key differences between Chinese video-streaming platforms (VSPs) and Netflix is the bullet screen option. Bullet screen, or “Danmaku” in Japanese, and dan’mu in Chinese, refers to the overlaid audience comments flying from right to left across the screen. These comments are displayed in the timeline when they were created, so later viewers may see exactly what comments have been left at a certain point in time during the show. Thus, the bullet screen is synchronous for the viewer, and also a form of asynchronous and trans-spatial interaction between the comment creators and their readers.

There have been many studies on the bullet screen. Its origins in the Japanese video website Niconico . jp in 2006 and how it became popular in China have been thoroughly described (Liu et al. 2016; Ni 2017). Chinese VSPs such as LeTV, iQIYI, Tencent and Sohu adopted the bullet screen feature in 2014. Youku and Tudou adopted it in 2015. It has since become a default feature of Chinese VSPs.

We analyzed 24,937 bullet screen comments from Crime Crackdown (2021) on Tencent Video, with the assistance of the data-mining software Pycharm. The 28-episode drama series Crime Crackdown (2021) was produced by Shanghai Tencent Penguin Film Culture Communication Co., Ltd, a subsidiary of Tencent, the leading listed company in media and communication in China. The show premiered simultaneously on the Beijing TV Station Dongfang TV and online on Tencent Video on August 9, 2021. It reached 5.5 billion views as of March 2022 and received a rating of 8.9 points (out of 10 on Tencent Video). This chapter focuses on why the bullet screen is such a widespread functionality in China, what audiences bullet-screen about and how the bullet screen affects the viewing experience of TV series online, especially in the case of suspense genres.

Understanding the Bullet Screen

Bullet screen culture was first popular among viewers described as “Otaku,” a Japanese word for the group of people interested in consuming anime and manga online who live in their “two-dimensional” world. This shared subcultural interest can be associated with bullet screen in-group comments. The bullet screen thus offers a sense of “social presence,” according to Ni (2017). The concept of “social presence” was first raised by Short, Williams and Christie. They defined social presence as “the degree of salience of the other person in the interaction” (Short et al. 1976, 65).