The impact of life changes on social media practices: An ethnographic study of young Chinese adults living in Australia

There are mainstream research focuses on how social media affect people's lives, the present study explores how people use social media when confronted with life changing events or circumstances, especially when living overseas. Being exposed to a new living environment in Australia, many young adults from other countries are faced with a range of challenges. These may include cultural barriers, language limitations, employment difficulties, and academic pressures. The interpersonal relationships of young adults and their technological mediations shift as they experience life changes. Drawing from long-term ethnographic research among young adults who moved from mainland China to Australia for further education or employment, I argue that social media are crucial in assisting young adults to navigate their life transitions. However, this plays out differently depending on the type of relationship and social context (friendship, love, family and work). I propose that with the affordances and the integrated communicative environment that polymedia (Madianou & Miller's 2013) provides, young adults living overseas present themselves and their life changes to diverse groups of people in different ways in order to mediate different types of ongoing relationships. This thesis contributes to the scholarship of interpersonal relationships and social media studies by exploring the digitally mediated communication of young adults going through life changes

Social Media in Rural China

China’s distinctive social media platforms have gained notable popularity among the nation’s vast number of internet users, but has China’s countryside been ‘left behind’ in this communication revolution? Tom McDonald spent 15 months living in a small rural Chinese community researching how the residents use social media in their daily lives. His ethnographic findings suggest that, far from being left behind, social media is already deeply integrated into the everyday experience of many rural Chinese people

NEW MOTHERS’ MANAGEMENT OF COMPLAINTS IN COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

This study examines new mothers’ complaining behaviors in computer-mediated communication (CMC) channels and investigates mothers’ privacy management when self-disclose family issues online. This study includes data collected through face-to-face in-depth interviews and interview surveys with new mothers (i.e., who had at least one child younger than 3 years old at the time), which were analyzed through constant comparative methods and descriptive statistics. In total, 35 participants were recruited for this study, including 16 American mothers and 19 Chinese mothers who live in the US. The study examines new mothers’ complaining behaviors in CMC channels through two steps. First, I explore the facilitators and barriers that influence new mothers’ choices when selecting the appropriate CMC channel(s) to complain about motherhood-related challenges and problems. Then I categorize these facilitators and barriers into four areas of consideration (i.e., emotion management, impression management, information control, and problem-solving) that mothers may think of when balancing the benefits and risks of using any CMC channel to express their negative feelings. Based on the Communication Privacy Management theory, I also investigate mothers’ self-disclosure behaviors in different channels. From level 1 (vague) to level 5 (full of details), mothers disclosed sensitive and private family issues with varying levels when complaining in different channels. The four areas of consideration can be applied again to explain their choices. I further identify four underlying factors across these areas of consideration that affect new mothers’ online complaining behavior: mothers’ expected social support types, the nature of the complaining subject, online privacy literacy, and cultural differences. Finally, I propose an integrated model of negative self-disclosure via CMC which demonstrates all the factors that potentially impact people’s channel selection and message-framing processes

Social Media in Rural China

China’s distinctive social media platforms have gained notable popularity among the nation’s vast number of internet users, but has China’s countryside been ‘left behind’ in this communication revolution? Tom McDonald spent 15 months living in a small rural Chinese community researching how the residents use social media in their daily lives. His ethnographic findings suggest that, far from being left behind, social media is already deeply integrated into the everyday experience of many rural Chinese people

Digital social norms and mobile-based social networking applications : a study of urban Chinese young people's use of WeChat

Ph.D. ThesisToday, the advent of mobile-based social networking applications is dramatically changing how urban Chinese young people socialise with each other, as well as how they experience the world. In particular, WeChat – the most popular Chinese mobile-based social networking application – has been launched onto the market, attracting millions of young users in urban China. The ways in which young people use this application are inextricably linked to the dynamics of their urban living experiences, forming the digital social norms to which they adhere in their everyday lives. In this thesis, I develop an interdisciplinary approach which synthesises affect/new materialism and traditional cultural studies (e.g. symbolic interactionism) in order to understand the digital social norms emerging with urban Chinese young people’s everyday use of WeChat. In particular, Chinese college students are a representative group of young people, who are early adopters of WeChat and lead the trend of its usage in China. Through a year-long netnographic enquiry with 19 college students recruited from a chosen university in China, the research uncovers: 1) how the affective design of WeChat attracts urban Chinese young people’s attention and influences their everyday practices; 2) how these young people practise self-presentation through their personalisation of space; 3) how these young people socialise with close-by strangers; as well as 4) how these young people preserve their spatial privacy. The outcomes of the discussion not only help to understand the digital social norms emerging with this particular form of technology among urban Chinese younger generation but also develop an in-depth understanding of the relationship between culture and technology that speaks to a broader audience

The Global Smartphone

The smartphone is often literally right in front of our nose, so you would think we would know what it is. But do we? To find out, 11 anthropologists each spent 16 months living in communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, focusing on the take up of smartphones by older people. Their research reveals that smartphones are technology for everyone, not just for the young. The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them. The smartphone is unprecedented in the degree to which we can transform it. As a result, it quickly assimilates personal values. In order to comprehend it, we must take into consideration a range of national and cultural nuances, such as visual communication in China and Japan, mobile money in Cameroon and Uganda, and access to health information in Chile and Ireland – all alongside diverse trajectories of ageing in Al Quds, Brazil and Italy. Only then can we know what a smartphone is and understand its consequences for people’s lives around the world

The Global Smartphone: Beyond a youth technology

The smartphone is often literally right in front of our nose, so you would think we would know what it is. But do we? To find out, 11 anthropologists each spent 16 months living in communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, focusing on the take up of smartphones by older people. Their research reveals that smartphones are technology for everyone, not just for the young. The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them. The smartphone is unprecedented in the degree to which we can transform it. As a result, it quickly assimilates personal values. In order to comprehend it, we must take into consideration a range of national and cultural nuances, such as visual communication in China and Japan, mobile money in Cameroon and Uganda, and access to health information in Chile and Ireland – all alongside diverse trajectories of ageing in Al Quds, Brazil and Italy. Only then can we know what a smartphone is and understand its consequences for people’s lives around the world

Social Media in Rural China

China’s distinctive social media platforms have gained notable popularity among the nation’s vast number of internet users, but has China’s countryside been ‘left behind’ in this communication revolution? Tom McDonald spent 15 months living in a small rural Chinese community researching how the residents use social media in their daily lives. His ethnographic findings suggest that, far from being left behind, social media is already deeply integrated into the everyday experience of many rural Chinese people

Social Media in Rural China: Social Networks and Moral Frameworks

China’s distinctive social media platforms have gained notable popularity among the nation’s vast number of internet users, but has China’s countryside been ‘left behind’ in this communication revolution? Tom McDonald spent 15 months living in a small rural Chinese community researching how the residents use social media in their daily lives. His ethnographic findings suggest that, far from being left behind, social media is already deeply integrated into the everyday experience of many rural Chinese people. Throughout his ground-breaking study, McDonald argues that social media allows rural people to extend and transform their social relationships by deepening already existing connections with friends known through their school, work or village, while also experimenting with completely new forms of relationships through online interactions with strangers. By juxtaposing these seemingly opposed relations, rural social media users are able to use these technologies to understand, capitalise on and challenge the notions of morality that underlie rural life.published_or_final_versio

Visual Social Media and Vernacular Responses to Environmental Issues in China

This thesis investigates the role of visual social media in providing ordinary Chinese with an alternative space to articulate their opinions on environmental issues. By studying three notable environmental cases, this thesis explores how ordinary Chinese adopt visual social media practices as a response to environmental issues, and to aid in the fight for environmental justice. This thesis provides a new perspective to understand China’s visual social media practices and its networked civic engagement