New Connectivities in China: Virtual, Actual and Local Interactions

237 Pages·2012·2.94 MB·English

by  Boxu Yang (auth.)

New Connectivities in China

Pui-lam Law
Editor
New Connectivities in China
Virtual, Actual and Local Interactions
Editor
Pui-lam Law
Department of Applied Social Sciences
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hong Kong, China
ISBN 978-94-007-3909-3 ISBN 978-94-007-3910-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-3910-9
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York
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Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge permission of the publishers to reprint the following articles.
Yang, B. (2009). NPOs in China: Some issues concerning Internet communication.
Knowledge, Technology and Policy, 21(1), 37–42; Fortunati, L., Manganelli, A. M.,
Law, P., & Yang, S. (2008). Beijing calling… Mobile communication in contemporary
China. K nowledge, Technology and Policy, 21(1), 19–27; Fortunati, L., Manganelli,
A. M., Law, P., & Yang, S. (2008). The mobile face of contemporary China.
Telektronikk , 104(2), 57–67; Yang, K. (2008). A preliminary study on the use of
mobile phones amongst migrant workers in Beijing. Knowledge, Technology and
Policy , 21(2), 65–72; Lin, A., & Tong, A. (2008). Mobile cultures of migrant workers
in southern China: Informal literacies in the negotiation of (new) social relations of
the new working women. K nowledge, Technology and Policy , 21(2), 73–81; Peng,
Y. (2008). Internet use of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta. Knowledge,
Technology and Policy, 21(2), 47–54; Ngan, R., & Ma, S. (2008). The relationship
of mobile telephony to job mobility in China ’ s Pearl River Delta. Knowledge,
Technology and Policy , 21(2), 55–63; Chu, W. C. R. (2008). The dynamics of cyber
China: The characteristics of Chinese ICT use. K nowledge, Technology and Policy ,
21(1), 29–35 (retitled in Chapter 16 as “ICT Use with Chinese Characteristics” and
co-authored with Y. Peng); Zhao, J. (2008). ICT4D: Internet adoption and usage
among rural users in China. K nowledge, Technology and Policy , 21(1), 9–18.
I would like to thank the authors for their relentless commitment and their
contributions to this collection. Finally, I would also like to express our gratitude to
the reviewers for their thoughtful and meticulous comments.
v

Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... v
Notes on Contributors .................................................................................... ix
Introduction ..................................................................................................... xiii
Pui-lam Law
Part I The Internet Communication and the Issue of Civil Society
1 NPOs in China: Some Issues Concerning
Internet Communication ........................................................................ 3
Boxu Yang
2 Dot the “I’s” and Cross the “T’s”: A Sociological Interpretation
of Chinese Cyberspace and the Qianyuan Grace Wang Incident ...... 13
Chung-tai Cheng
3 Rage and Refl ection: Chinese Nationalism Online
Between Emotional Venting and Measured Opinion ........................... 23
David Kurt Herold
Part II Studies on Mobile Phone Uses in Beijing
4 Beijing Calling… Mobile Communication in Contemporary China ..... 39
Leopoldina Fortunati, Anna Maria Manganelli, Pui-lam Law,
and Shanhua Yang
5 The “Mobile” Face of Contemporary China ........................................ 53
Leopoldina Fortunati, Anna Maria Manganelli,
Pui-lam Law, and Shanhua Yang
6 A Preliminary Study on the Mobile Phone
Use of Migrant Workers in Beijing ....................................................... 67
Ke Yang
vii
viii Contents
Part III The ICTs and Migrant Workers in Southern China
7 Mobile Cultures of Migrant Workers in Southern China:
Informal Literacies in the Negotiation of (New) Social
Relations of the New Working Women ................................................. 81
Angel Mei-yi Lin and Avin H.M. Tong
8 Internet Use of Migrant Workers in the Pearl River Delta ................. 95
Yinni Peng
9 Mobile Phones and the Empowerment of Migrant Workers
in Job Search in China’s Pearl River Delta .......................................... 105
Raymond Ngan and Stephen K. Ma
10 Mobile Communication and the Issue of Identity:
An Exploratory Study of the Uses of the Camera
Phone Among Migrant Workers in Southern China ........................... 121
Pui-lam Law
Part IV New Network and New Identifi cation
11 Beyond Privileges: New Media and the Issues
of Glocalization in China ........................................................................ 133
Boxu Yang
12 The Principled Machine: A Sociopolitical
Inquiry of Mobile Voting in Chinese Society ........................................ 149
Chung-tai Cheng
13 The Use of ICT Products and “White-Collarization”
of White-Collar Workers: An Everyday-Life Perspective .................. 159
Shanhua Yang and Jing Li
14 Home and Away: A Case Study of Students
and Social Media in Shanghai ................................................................ 171
Larissa Hjorth and Michael Arnold
Part V New Connectivities and Chinese Social Context
15 Toward a New “Electrical World”: Is There
a Chinese Technological Sublime? ......................................................... 185
Matteo Tarantino
16 ICT Use with Chinese Characteristics .................................................. 201
Wai-chi Rodney Chu and Yinni Peng
17 ICTD: Internet Adoption and Usage
Amongst Rural Users in China .............................................................. 215
Jinqiu Zhao
Index ................................................................................................................. 229
Notes on Contributors
Michael Arnold is senior lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science
Programme in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University
of Melbourne, Australia. His ongoing teaching and research activities lie at the
intersection of contemporary technologies and our society and culture. Michael’s
currently funded research projects include (1) a comparative study of social net-
working in six locations across the Asia-Pacifi c, (2) a longitudinal examination of
high-speed broadband in the domestic context, (3) a study to develop methods to
assess social returns on investments in technologies, (4) a study of ethical and
governance issues associated with the electronic health record, and (5) a study of
online memorials. Michael is a founding committee member and current Secretary
of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (Australian Chapter) and is
an Australian committee member of the Community Informatics Research Network.
Chung-tai Cheng gained his Ph.D. in Sociology from the Peking University in
China. He is currently research associate of the Centre for Third Sector Studies in
the Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
His research interest is on the topic of the normative implications of ICT uses
in China. His journal articles and book chapters are mainly on social and cultural
impacts of ICTs.
Wai-chi Rodney Chu obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of
Queensland, Australia. He is assistant professor in the Department of Applied Social
Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Currently, he is focusing on
research concerning the sociocultural impact of ICTs on contemporary Chinese,
with particular reference to the use of mobile telephony and the Internet by migrant
workers and university students.
Leopoldina Fortunati is professor of sociology of communication and sociology
of cultural processes in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of
Udine, Italy. She has conducted several researches in the fi eld of gender studies,
cultural processes, and communication technologies. She is the author of many
books and has published extensively in important journals. She represents Italy in
ix
x Notes on Contributors
the COST Domain Committee “Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health” and in
the COST 298 “Participation in the Broadband Society.” She is the co-chair of the
international association “The Society for the Social Study of Mobile Communication”
(SSSMC) which aims to facilitate the international advancement of cross-disciplinary
mobile communication studies. Her work has been published in 11 languages.
David Kurt Herold taught and researched in China for over 9 years, before joining
the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as lecturer for sociology. His research is
focused on the use of ICTs by humans. In particular, he studies the Chinese Internet,
encounters between Chinese and non-Chinese online, the impact of the internet on
offl ine society, and online education. His recent publications include Cultural
Politics and Political Culture of Web 2.0 in Asia (2009), Knowledge, Technology,
and Policy; Mediating Media Studies—Stimulating Critical Awareness in a virtual
environment (2010), Computers & Education; Imperfect Use? ICT Provisions and
Human Decisions (2010), The Information Society; and Online Society in China
(2011), Routledge.
Larissa Hjorth is an artist, digital ethnographer, and senior lecturer in the Games
Programs, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia. Since
2000, Hjorth has been researching and publishing on gendered mobile media, gaming,
and virtual communities in the Asia-Pacifi c—these studies are outlined in her book,
Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacifi c (London, Routledge). Hjorth has published widely
on the topic in national and International journals such as Games and Culture Journal ,
Convergence Journal , Journal of Intercultural Studies, Continuum, ACCESS, Fibre-
culture and S outhern Review, and in 2009 coedited two Routledge anthologies,
Gaming Cultures and Place in the Asia-Pacifi c Region (with Dean Chan) and Mobile
Technologies: From Telecommunication to Media (with Gerard Goggin). In 2010,
Hjorth released G ames & Gaming textbook (London: Berg).
Pui-lam Law received his Ph.D. in sociology from The University of New South
Wales, Australia. He is currently assistant professor in the Department of Applied
Social Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and visiting research
fellow at the Centre for Creative Industries Studies of Peking University. His research
interest is on modernity and social development in China. Currently, he is working
on the ICTs and the issue of migrant workers identity in southern China.
Jing Li obtained her Masters degree in sociology at Peking University, Beijing,
China, in 2007. Currently, she is the head of human resources offi ce in Economic
Consulting Center of the State Information Center. She has studied the mobile
telephony and migrant workers and the ICTs and social stratifi cation since 2004 and
published journal articles and book chapters on the social consequence of the ICTs.
Angel Mei-yi Lin received her Ph.D. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, University of Toronto, Canada, in 1996. She is currently an associate
professor in the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. She has been
an active and productive researcher in the areas of critical discourse analysis, urban
ethnography, critical pedagogy, feminist media studies, and youth literacies and