School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSearching Guangzhou: Regionalising Weibo( 2013)This post reflects on regionalising Chinese Internet: how the geo-identity of a city/province shapes and is also being shaped by developing communication technologies in China. A city is not merely the administrative unit that is part of the nation, but a city’s transformation and experience over time offer the realm to manage one’s sense of self and belonging. Weibo taps into this process and mediates the tension and conflicts between regions and nation.
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ItemAn Opinion leader and the making of a city on China's Sina Weibo(University of Adelaide Press, 2016)This chapter examines the role of an opinion leader on Sina Weibo who conducted the online campaign that countered the nationwide anti-Japan protests in Guangzhou. Specifically, I focus on those online practices by the opinion leader and his followers which have reproduced the sense of locality of Guangzhou, the southern Chinese city near Hong Kong and Macau. I argue that the online practice of (re)posting, archiving, uploading and searching evolved into the bodily practices of photographing, observing and mapping the city. Such technobodily embodiment encapsulates Guangzhou's local values on the one hand and the national agenda of border sovereignty on the other. It has thus effectively renarrated an alternative vision of nationhood, one that differs from the state imposed version.
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ItemChinese video streaming services in the context of global platform studies(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2019-04-03)While recent platform theory within media and communication studies has been developed around US-based examples, platformization has taken a rather different path in China. Focusing on the video streaming service iQiyi, this article asks: What can we learn from approaching Chinese platforms not merely as exception to Western models, but as an opportunity for theory building around platformization generally? We argue that Chinese online video represents a useful case for rethinking specific elements of platform theory as currently developed in English-language scholarship. Through a close analysis of iQiyi’s interface and regulation, we develop two arguments. The first argument concerns the relationship between regulatory environment, market structure, and platform affordances; and the second concerns platform interfaces, personalization, and fragmentation.
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ItemRe-imagining Guangzhou on Sina Weibo: Geo-identity and Chinese Social Media(Taylor & Francis, 2017-09-27)Despite the rich insights provided by current research on Chinese social media, studies tend to conceptualise China's cyberspace as placeless, where the political implication and cultural imagination are geographically indifferent. Studying the Chinese internet can act as a productive line of enquiry that explores the processes of the structural transformations and power relations in Chinese society. The field of Chinese internet research has, over time, received considerable criticisms for its conceptual and analytic approaches. In responding to the above criticism, some scholars have attempted to re-think the Chinese Internet through a cultural historical lens. The notion of place is historically significant in shaping the diverse and rich humanistic culture, political system and economic orientation in China. As folk ritual and local ways of life continue to define people's sense of self and being, place as a spatial unit continues to reconfigure social networks and power relations in the greater world.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableApproaches to Death, Funeral Rites and Memorialisation in Contemporary Australia: Changes and Continuities(Monash University, 2019)Cemeteries in Victoria were planned and designed 150 years ago, without any major developments taking place since. Large numbers of baby-boomers, as well as migrants of a similar age, are now at a stage where end-of-life plans come into view. However, their needs of funeral rites require reassessment due to a significantly different socio-cultural context where social norms are shifting and environmental resources are scarce. Considering the aging population and the contexts of ‘religion, space and economic rationalisation’, the new cultural differences and changing religious affiliations are likely to be reflected on public preferences in relation to funeral rites.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAnalysing everyday online political talk in China: Theoretical and methodological reflections(RMIT-SCH MEDIA & COMMUNICATION, 2016)