Editor's Introduction

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry includes first two original research articles cohering around the role of digital media toward social change. Part two of the issue includes three original articles and a book review that coheres around digital media and power, hegemony, and cultural imperialism. This issue starts with the article titled “Mobile Payment in China: A Study from a Sociological Perspective,” by WeiMing Ye, Weirong Chen, and Leopoldina Fortunati. The paper looks at the adoption of mobile money in China. The authors of this study focused on the macroand meso-level reasons why people in China are adopting mobile money. This is different from most studies which have focused on mobile payment functionality and the microlevel reasons of adoption. This paper is divided into five sections with the first section looking at mobile phone as the new locus of payment. The second section looks at the structure, evolution, and policies that influence mobile payment, while the third section explains the reconstruction of socioeconomic premises for the development of mobile payments in China with a point of reference to the USA. The authors argue that China’s mobile money market is the fastest growing and the largest market, 204 times bigger than that of the USA. They argue that the USA has lagged most likely because of the high inertia produced by credit cards’ use. Lastly, the fourth section focuses on the socioeconomic reasons for the rapid development of mobile money, while the fifth section looks at how social relationships have shaped the development of mobile money. In their conclusion on why mobile payment has become a locus form of payment in China, the authors argue that with mobile phones becoming the closest to the human body, mobile phones are now an important tool as a payment method as well as forming relationships. The second paper by Jessica Maddox and Shaheen Kanthawala is titled, “The Revolution Will Be Forwarded: Interrogating India’s WhatsApp Imaginary.” The article looks at WhatsApp as one of the most popular social media apps, as well as one of the most popular chat-based, closed platforms in India. The authors conducted 19 in-depth interviews taking a cultural perspective of WhatsApp’s ritual communication, with the aim of understanding how WhatsApp users make sense of its usage in their daily lives. While focusing on individual who are 40 years and older, the authors of this article tapped into the underrepresented populations which shared insights on what life was like before WhatsApp. Hence, they approached the paper as a ritual communication analyzing how past and present views of communication Editorial