Social work research and practice in the digital age

Abstract

This special issue of the China Journal of Social Work presents three articles that expand our theoretical, empirical and reflective understandings of social work education, research and practice in the digital age. Reflecting the country’s commitment to promoting the development of its digital economy, China’s 14th Five-year Plan on Digital Economy Development details the roadmap for national development strategies to achieve this goal. Its main strategies include pushing for the use of blockchains and advanced technologies like 6 G. A circular issued by the General Office of the State Council on 12 January 2022, states that “By 2025, the digital economy should be in full expansion mode, with the added value of core industries in the digital economy accounting for 10% of GDP” (State Council, PRC 2022). Besides the economic/business sector, the general public is also regarded as a beneficiary of the improved efficiency brought about by providing digital social services. Actually, people in China are already deeply engaged in digital life. For instance, as of July 2022, the number of Internet users reached 6,988,549 in Hong Kong with a 92% penetration rate, 632,175 in Macau with a 95.2% penetration rate, and 1,010,740,000 in the Chinese Mainland with a 69.8% penetration rate. As for the number of Facebook users, Hong Kong has 6,528,700 with an 85.9% penetration rate, Macau has 449,700 with a 67.7% penetration rate, and the Chinese Mainland has 4,506,000 with a 0.3% penetration rate (Internet World Stats 2023). Thus, the growth of the digital population in China has increased prominently, especially when these figures are compared with the 2019 statistics (number of Internet users: 829,000,000 with a 58.4% penetration rate, number of Facebook subscribers: 1,800,000 with a 0.1% penetration rate) (Internet World Stats 2023). Furthermore, the number of 5 G base stations in China reached 1.43 million, with over 500 million 5 G users as of early March 2022 (Wu 2022). At present, social work research, education and practice have kept pace with the digitalisation of the everyday life of Chinese citizens. In this regard, we are fortunate to have access to three inspiring papers that examine and discuss the application of AI chatbots to advance social work training, conduct e-research and compare the services for enhancing the ICT competencies of ageing populations in China and Finland. Using an illustrative case study design, the first paper by Chan and Li describes the process of developing a Chinese LGPT chatbot (Yuan 1.0) to roleplay as clients chat with human social workers. This paper also discusses the possibility of using AI chatbots upon completing social work training in a Chinese context. In this illustration, a full transcript of human – bot conversation was shown to readers, and the authors concluded that human users can take part in designing the chatbot’s personality by presetting the age, problems, personality and brief history. In doing so, the chatbot can chat with human users anytime and anywhere through different platforms (e.g. webpage and WeChat), offering much convenience to users. Furthermore, CHINA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK 2023, VOL. 16, NO. 2, 117–120 https://doi.org/10.1080/17525098.2023.2266185