School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemDining 'on and off': Good, wellbeing and WeChat use among older Chinese migrants in Australia(Association of Internet Researchers, 2020)This study examines how WeChat, one of the most popular Chinese messenger applications installed on smartphone, facilitates the formation of an older Chinese diasporic space that is centered around the self-nurturing diet (yinshi yangsheng) cultural discourse in Australia. Media has traditionally played a crucial role in disseminating yangsheng-related information and knowledge in China (Sun 2016). However, currently literature in older Chinese people’s media consumption mainly focuses on experience and processes within China few have paid attention to surging number of older Chinese who are ageing in a transnational context. Through analysing data collected from eight focused group (12 people each) conducted at a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane, Australia, and examining OCM participants’ WeChat use,it is found that WeChat not only facilitates the formation of an older Chinese social space in Australia but the platform has acted as a self- and mutual-reliance mechanism for OCMs to negotiate and make sense of their biological change of ageing and biographic change of transnational migration.
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ItemMapping Cantonese: The Pro-Cantonese Protest and Sina Weibo in Guangzhou(Springer International Publishing, 2020)This chapter explores the reproduction of Guangzhou’s local identity during the pro-Cantonese protest in 2010 on Sina Weibo, one of the most popular social media platforms in China. Specifically, the chapter posits that Cantonese is one of Guangzhouers’ bodily doings and Weibo is also part of the Guangzhou body. Henceforth, Cantonese was not merely the source of contention, but the local language enabled the reconfiguration of the local subjectivity through the practices of digital place remaking. By examining the collected Weibo data during the protest, it is found that Cantonese facilitated a series of cultural practices and physical doings on Weibo that enhanced the spatial mobility of the Guangzhou body during the protest. The intertwining between Cantonese and Weibo emancipated the Guangzhou’s body from the cultural authorities of the Chinese state by allowing it to reproduce and reassert its locality and individuality. Cantonese, the Guangzhou city, and Weibo were co-constitutive in configuring the spatial mobility of the Guangzhou body, allowing it to be simultaneously presenting within the virtual and physical worlds and transiting between the social and cultural spaces of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. This chapter has the potential to contribute to our knowledge of digital media and society by connecting geo-lingual research with those studies of digital media culture and politics.