Digitalising rural lifestyles: Online platforms and everyday life in Chinese villages

Abstract

This article moves beyond the agriculture-centred perspective of researching digital lives in rural areas and the view of the urban–rural digital divide to focus on the daily interactions between rural practices and digital platforms in Chinese villages. Based on an analysis of qualitative data collected from two wider projects on rural development and poverty alleviation in China, the key findings of this article argue that rural residents are active prosumers of digital platforms who sustain their rural lifestyles through embedding new cross-platform practices into their familiar rural activities. These findings have confirmed the contradictions of the digital divide between rural and urban China. The contribution of this article offers a practice-oriented and cross-platform approach that can deepen digital and rural geographies’ understanding of the human-technology assemblage of the embodied, practised, and experienced rurality in everyday contexts.