
Described as the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Xinyuan Wang spent 15 months living among a community of these migrants in a small factory town in southeast China to track their use of social media. It was here she witnessed a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise ‘homeless’.
Wang’s fascinating study explores the full range of preconceptions commonly held about Chinese people – their relationship with education, with family, with politics, with ‘home’ – and argues why, for this vast population, it is time to reassess what we think we know about contemporary China and the evolving role of social media.
- Front-Cover
- Half Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Introduction to the series Why We Post
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of charts
- 1 Introduction
- A brief review of the book
- Chinese family and hukou
- The story of Dong
- The GoodPath: A transitional town
- A tour of GoodPath
- The first stop: The high street
- The second stop: Zhao village
- The third stop: Peasant flats (nongmin fang) in the new villages
- The fourth stop: The digital centre
- The fifth stop: Factory plants
- The end of the tour
- A final note on methodology
- A brief review of the book
- 2 The social media landscape in China1
- A brief history of Chinese ICTs’ development6
- QQ: The dominant social media platform in GoodPath
- QQ – once the symbol of urban lifestyle
- WeChat — China’s favourite new social media
- What is Weibo?
- Social media and smartphones
- Conclusion
- 3 Visual material on social media
- Genres of visual material on social media
- ‘Relationships’
- ‘Selfies’
- ‘Trivia’
- ‘Compulsorily shared’
- ‘Chicken soup for the soul’
- ‘Humour’
- ‘Fantasy’
- ‘Children’
- ‘Travel’
- ‘Events’
- ‘Archive’
- ‘Political’
- ‘Food’
- ‘Anti-mainstream’ (Feizhuliu)
- ‘Commercial’
- What is special about the visual postings of rural migrants?
- The coming of age of young rural migrants on social media
- The visual on social media – a new language
- Genres of visual material on social media
- 4 Social media and social relationships
- ‘Thank you for keeping me on your contact list’
- The ‘hot and noisy’ principle
- Couples and wider family relationships on social media
- Romantic relationships on social media
- Friendship on social media
- Yin si (privacy) on social media
- Conclusion
- 5 Social media, politics and gender
- Internet censorship in China
- The living experience of politics – offline and online
- ‘Be in love with the government, but don’t marry it’
- Politics as a football game
- ‘I have no interests in politics, but being a Communist Party member is so useful’
- The ‘phoenix man’ and his political life
- Conclusion
- The good women of China41
- Men: From opposition to feminisation
- Conclusion
- 6 The wider world: Beyond social relationships
- The atheist, folk religion and death
- Chinese folk religion: Some background
- Deities on social media
- The homeland on social media
- Folk tales on social media
- Story 1 (in brief)
- Story 2 (in brief)
- Future life on social media
- Conclusion
- 7 Conclusion: The dual migration
- The deep rupture offline
- The profound reconstruction online
- Notes
- References
- Index
- Back-Cover
Free Machine Learning Books
11 Books
- Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics)
- by Christopher M. Bishop
- Data mining
- by I. H. Witten
- The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction
- by Various
Free Chemistry Textbooks
8 Books
- CK-12 Chemistry
- by Various
- Chemistry Grade 10 [CAPS]
- by Free High School Science Texts Project
- General Chemistry II
- by John Hutchinson
Free Mathematics Textbooks
21 Books
- Microsoft Word - How to Use Advanced Algebra II.doc
- by Jonathan Emmons
- Advanced Algebra II: Activities and Homework
- by Kenny Felder
- de2de
- by
Free Children Books
38 Books
- The Sun Who Lost His Way
- by
- Tania is a Detective
- by Kanika G
- Firenze_s-Light
- by
Free Java Books
10 Books
- Java 3D Programming
- by Daniel Selman
- The Java EE 6 Tutorial
- by Oracle Corporation
- JavaKid811
- by
- Jamaica Primary Social Studies 2nd Edition Student's Book 4
- by Eulie Mantock, Trineta Fendall, Clare Eastland
- Reggae Readers Student's Book 1
- by Louis Fidge
- Reggae Readers Student's Book 2
- by Louis Fidge