School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemNavigating Online Down Under: International Students’ Digital Journeys in Australia(Rowman & Littlefield, 2018)Research focusing on the experiences of international students tends to centre directly on their educational experiences rather than their everyday lives outside study. Moreover, much of this research has concentrated almost exclusively on the various impacts of the physical, geographic mobility of international students as they move from one country to another, with very little exploration of their digital experiences. There also exists extensive research on the social media and information seeking experiences of young people in different regions of the world. Some of this research provides a comparison between different sources of information and uses of social media. However, there has been little research on what happens when young people move between regions or countries. Borrowing Chang and Gomes’ (2017a) concept of the digital journey, where in crossing transnational borders, migrants might also cross digital borders, this chapter provides some concrete examples of the digital experiences of international students as they transition––wholly or partly––to the Australian digital environment. How do international students transition from certain online environments into others that may be completely different, even alien, to what they have previously experienced? Referring to qualitative and quantitative data collected from three separate projects conducted between 2012 and 2017, this chapter shows that in making the digital journey, international students in Australia do not so much quit their original digital comfort zones as widen their digital horizons. Understanding international students’ digital journeys is particularly significant since it has implications for future research in international student well-being and the provision of support services for students.
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ItemMedia, Place, Sociality and National Publics: Chinese International Students in Translocal Networks(Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)Globally, International tertiary students form a sizeable mobile population: in 2012, some 4.5 million studied outside their country of citizenship. In the face of the severe decline in government funding since the late 1980s, Australian universities have enthusiastically welcomed these students and the fee revenue they bring. Today, around one in five enrolments in Australian universities are by International students, with China by far the most significant sending nation. What are the implications of these developments? On one hand, Australian governments celebrate the economic success of the nation’s ‘education export’ strategy. On the other hand––particularly in light of ubiquitous broadband connectivity and students’ ready access to ‘homeland’ media––the intensifying inflow of International students has raised questions about both these students’ social experience in Australian cities, and the significance of their presence from the point of view of wider national civic life. In this paper, I draw my ongoing research with Chinese International students in order to consider two questions. First: how does these students’ everyday media use shape their experiences of mobility and belonging in Melbourne? Second: how do the students’ media and social experiences in Melbourne impact on their negotiations with the concept of ‘China’ and Chinese identity? My research suggests the need to move beyond reductive views of Chinese student communities either as contributing to a damaging fragmentation of an Australian public sphere, on the one hand, or as cyphers of long-distance Chinese nationalism, on the other.