From Wall to Screen: A Study on the Generation, Uniqueness and Digital Secondary Dissemination of Winchester Graffiti Culture

Ziyue Xie

doi:10.54691/q2fhm895

Authors

Ziyue Xie MA Communication Design, Southampton University, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54691/q2fhm895

Keywords:

Graffiti culture; Digital secondary dissemination; Mediatization; Social media; Winchester.

Abstract

This study explores the generation, uniqueness and digital secondary dissemination of graffiti culture, and selects the city of Winchester in the UK as the main case. Graffiti is usually regarded in the traditional sense as a form of urban visual expression related to subculture, spatial resistance and local visibility. However, with the popularity of smart phones and social media platforms in modern society, more and more people are taking pictures, uploading and sharing graffiti online, which indicates that it has widely entered the digital environment. This study examines the visual and spatial characteristics of graffiti in Winchester, explores how social platforms such as Instagram and Facebook have reshaped their dissemination methods, and analyzes the significance of their secondary dissemination. The research adopts a qualitative research approach, integrating visual text analysis with social media content analysis. It integrates, summarizes and analyzes approximately 20 to 30 graffiti works and 30 to 50 related social media posts from dimensions such as style, theme, color, spatial position, tags and user interaction. The research results show that graffiti has gradually evolved from a local street expression to a universal visual cultural phenomenon across media. In the process of digital secondary dissemination, it is transformed from urban spatial symbols into visual content that can be circulated online, and its meaning is continuously reconstructed relying on platform visibility and audience participation. This study combines three types of theories: subculture, space and mediatization, and builds a cross-media analytical framework for analyzing the dissemination phenomenon of graffiti in the current digital age.

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