Pub Date : 2023-07-05DOI: 10.1177/20594364231188201
Leif Johnson
Although material components of digital infrastructure stacks are often understood as operating through platforms or protocols in a smoothly interconnected way, their expansion, repair, and continued functionality nevertheless require significant interventions in the material world. These include the installation, repair, and maintenance of fiber-optic backbones, as well as the disruption of everyday residential life for the purpose of “last mile” fiber installations. Based on participant observation conducted with construction teams engaged in rebuilding the base level of Shanghai’s digital infrastructure stack, this article questions “plug-and-play” views of Chinese digital infrastructure, instead refocusing analysis on the legal and sociocultural technologies that facilitate material infrastructural construction. In the case of Shanghai’s Overhead-Underground project, legal and social mechanisms that facilitate migration have themselves become crucial to the physical aspects of digital infrastructure, which is built through subcontracted low-waged labor systems that rely on assumedly temporary rural-to-urban migrant labor. The resulting systems of labor provision both reflect and maintain the structure of a politically divided public: High-quality “smart city” infrastructure is built for the service of an avowedly urban public, but only through a reliance on “low-skilled” rural migrant construction workers, who are formally and informally excluded from the city their infrastructural interventions are designed to serve.
{"title":"Technologies of migration and citizenship: Life and work at the base of Shanghai’s digital infrastructure stack","authors":"Leif Johnson","doi":"10.1177/20594364231188201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231188201","url":null,"abstract":"Although material components of digital infrastructure stacks are often understood as operating through platforms or protocols in a smoothly interconnected way, their expansion, repair, and continued functionality nevertheless require significant interventions in the material world. These include the installation, repair, and maintenance of fiber-optic backbones, as well as the disruption of everyday residential life for the purpose of “last mile” fiber installations. Based on participant observation conducted with construction teams engaged in rebuilding the base level of Shanghai’s digital infrastructure stack, this article questions “plug-and-play” views of Chinese digital infrastructure, instead refocusing analysis on the legal and sociocultural technologies that facilitate material infrastructural construction. In the case of Shanghai’s Overhead-Underground project, legal and social mechanisms that facilitate migration have themselves become crucial to the physical aspects of digital infrastructure, which is built through subcontracted low-waged labor systems that rely on assumedly temporary rural-to-urban migrant labor. The resulting systems of labor provision both reflect and maintain the structure of a politically divided public: High-quality “smart city” infrastructure is built for the service of an avowedly urban public, but only through a reliance on “low-skilled” rural migrant construction workers, who are formally and informally excluded from the city their infrastructural interventions are designed to serve.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77216981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-26DOI: 10.1177/20594364231184109
Gladys Pak Lei Chong
This study adopts an ethnographic approach to examine how digital technology used at home ‐ mobile platforms and smart devices ‐ shaped the intimacy of ageing adults (aged 55 to 65) in Beijing. China’s fast-ageing population and its ambition to be a high‐tech superpower are some of the conditions that have necessitated the mobilisation of governmental ideas that link population management to technology development. This study built on Ara Wilson’s (2016) essay “The Infrastructure of Intimacy” by including critical infrastructure studies to examine how practices of intimacy are translated and operationalised through daily technology use at home. Data analysis was conducted using three frameworks: (1) making intimate: familiarising and reconnecting; (2) materialising intimacy: gifts, bonding, and avoidance; and (3) self‐intimacy (re)structured: choices, self‐love, and empowerment. The ethnographic data unveils the pivotal role of intimacy in the use of technologies and platforms by the ageing informants in managing their relationships between the self and their family and social relations. With its profound functionality in broadening the practices of intimacy, such as strengthening self-worth and self‐realisation, the daily use of digital technology at home also made it easier for the ageing informants in this study to deter, replace, and lessen their need for physical interactions. The findings suggest that normalising older adults’ active use of technology at home will further advance the technologisation of Chinese society while enhancing intimacy in the ageing population.
{"title":"Infrastructure at home: Technology, intimacy, and ageing in China","authors":"Gladys Pak Lei Chong","doi":"10.1177/20594364231184109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231184109","url":null,"abstract":"This study adopts an ethnographic approach to examine how digital technology used at home ‐ mobile platforms and smart devices ‐ shaped the intimacy of ageing adults (aged 55 to 65) in Beijing. China’s fast-ageing population and its ambition to be a high‐tech superpower are some of the conditions that have necessitated the mobilisation of governmental ideas that link population management to technology development. This study built on Ara Wilson’s (2016) essay “The Infrastructure of Intimacy” by including critical infrastructure studies to examine how practices of intimacy are translated and operationalised through daily technology use at home. Data analysis was conducted using three frameworks: (1) making intimate: familiarising and reconnecting; (2) materialising intimacy: gifts, bonding, and avoidance; and (3) self‐intimacy (re)structured: choices, self‐love, and empowerment. The ethnographic data unveils the pivotal role of intimacy in the use of technologies and platforms by the ageing informants in managing their relationships between the self and their family and social relations. With its profound functionality in broadening the practices of intimacy, such as strengthening self-worth and self‐realisation, the daily use of digital technology at home also made it easier for the ageing informants in this study to deter, replace, and lessen their need for physical interactions. The findings suggest that normalising older adults’ active use of technology at home will further advance the technologisation of Chinese society while enhancing intimacy in the ageing population.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78653861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-15DOI: 10.1177/20594364231184110
Yu Zou, Jing Di
This study explores the Health Code (Chinese: 健康码), a digital contact tracing application used in Mainland China during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examines the process and impact of its entry into users’ lives and gradual infrastructuralisation within the field of internet infrastructure research. Results show that techno-nationalism was the basis for the inception, implementation, and development of the Health Code. Furthermore, the Health Code has gradually transformed from an early digital health credential into a type of ‘access infrastructure’ by linking physical, information, and communication infrastructure. As access infrastructure, the relationship between the Health Code and users was a tense one, with users actively engaging in ‘micro-help’ on social media platforms and performing ‘soft-resistance’ on psychological and operational levels. Concurrently, the Health Code was embedded into users’ usage habits and social culture, becoming a shared memory and potential digital infrastructure for the future.
{"title":"Health Code as ‘access infrastructure’: Innovative practices and concerns of mediated governance","authors":"Yu Zou, Jing Di","doi":"10.1177/20594364231184110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231184110","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the Health Code (Chinese: 健康码), a digital contact tracing application used in Mainland China during the COVID-19 pandemic, and examines the process and impact of its entry into users’ lives and gradual infrastructuralisation within the field of internet infrastructure research. Results show that techno-nationalism was the basis for the inception, implementation, and development of the Health Code. Furthermore, the Health Code has gradually transformed from an early digital health credential into a type of ‘access infrastructure’ by linking physical, information, and communication infrastructure. As access infrastructure, the relationship between the Health Code and users was a tense one, with users actively engaging in ‘micro-help’ on social media platforms and performing ‘soft-resistance’ on psychological and operational levels. Concurrently, the Health Code was embedded into users’ usage habits and social culture, becoming a shared memory and potential digital infrastructure for the future.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78151157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-13DOI: 10.1177/20594364231183146
Qin Song
{"title":"Where Will Global Digital Platforms Go? Book Review: Terry Flew, Regulating Platforms","authors":"Qin Song","doi":"10.1177/20594364231183146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231183146","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84725040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-13DOI: 10.1177/20594364231183618
G. de Seta
This article traces the history of machine-readable data encoding standards and argues that the QR code has become an infrastructural gateway. Through the analysis of patents, corporate documents and advertising, ethnographic observations, and interviews with professionals, I describe the global making of the QR code and argue that the convergence of data encoding standards, mobile computing, machine vision algorithms, and platform ecosystems has led to the emergence of a new component of computational infrastructures which functions as a gateway between different actors, systems, and practices. The central section of the article covers seven decades of machine-readable data encoding history across different national and regional contexts: from the invention and popularization of the barcode in the United States, through the QR code’s invention in Japan and its success in East Asia, to its platformization in China. By revisiting this history through concepts drawn from the field of infrastructure studies, I argue that QR codes have become infrastructural gateways and conclude that this concept is useful not only to understand the current role of QR codes but also to identify and follow the emergence and change of other gateways in infrastructures to come.
{"title":"QR code: The global making of an infrastructural gateway","authors":"G. de Seta","doi":"10.1177/20594364231183618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231183618","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces the history of machine-readable data encoding standards and argues that the QR code has become an infrastructural gateway. Through the analysis of patents, corporate documents and advertising, ethnographic observations, and interviews with professionals, I describe the global making of the QR code and argue that the convergence of data encoding standards, mobile computing, machine vision algorithms, and platform ecosystems has led to the emergence of a new component of computational infrastructures which functions as a gateway between different actors, systems, and practices. The central section of the article covers seven decades of machine-readable data encoding history across different national and regional contexts: from the invention and popularization of the barcode in the United States, through the QR code’s invention in Japan and its success in East Asia, to its platformization in China. By revisiting this history through concepts drawn from the field of infrastructure studies, I argue that QR codes have become infrastructural gateways and conclude that this concept is useful not only to understand the current role of QR codes but also to identify and follow the emergence and change of other gateways in infrastructures to come.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78787580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-11DOI: 10.1177/20594364231182720
Zihan Wang
The current study examined companies’ use of social media platforms for CSR communication during the pandemic lockdown. We examined 1768 companies’ posts on Weibo and tested how the content and the features of the posts influenced retweets and likes. We used “fit” to describe a circumstance where an outside factor made a certain business more capable to alleviate the situation. We defined it as high in the perceived firm-situation fit. Results showed that for high-fit companies, the inclusion of pandemic content and CSR had a significant positive effect on retweets, while for low-fit companies, pandemic content hurt the number of retweets; the CSR factor did not influence retweets. The inclusion of CSR information had a significant positive effect on likes for both high-fit and low-fit companies. The results indicated that consumers have more moral expectations of high-fit companies to provide help during the pandemic lockdown. Moreover, increased interactivity has a significant positive effect on retweets and likes. Drawing from these results, practical suggestions on how to use social media platforms for future CSR communication to promote social good were also discussed.
{"title":"Platforms for helping: Companies’ CSR communication and consumers’ response on Weibo during the pandemic lockdown","authors":"Zihan Wang","doi":"10.1177/20594364231182720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231182720","url":null,"abstract":"The current study examined companies’ use of social media platforms for CSR communication during the pandemic lockdown. We examined 1768 companies’ posts on Weibo and tested how the content and the features of the posts influenced retweets and likes. We used “fit” to describe a circumstance where an outside factor made a certain business more capable to alleviate the situation. We defined it as high in the perceived firm-situation fit. Results showed that for high-fit companies, the inclusion of pandemic content and CSR had a significant positive effect on retweets, while for low-fit companies, pandemic content hurt the number of retweets; the CSR factor did not influence retweets. The inclusion of CSR information had a significant positive effect on likes for both high-fit and low-fit companies. The results indicated that consumers have more moral expectations of high-fit companies to provide help during the pandemic lockdown. Moreover, increased interactivity has a significant positive effect on retweets and likes. Drawing from these results, practical suggestions on how to use social media platforms for future CSR communication to promote social good were also discussed.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73529204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/20594364231181745
Huan Wang, Xiaohui Wang
This article aims to gain insights into the prevailing public sentiment during the policy relaxation period by examining whether the post-COVID-19 landscape reflects signs of withering or booming conditions. Employing methods from natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), the analysis reveals a predominance of positive sentiment from December 7, 2022 to May 17, 2023, indicative of an optimistic perspective and a potentially flourishing environment. A predictive model based on logistic regression emerges as a notably effective tool for sentiment prediction, suggesting potential utility in predicting future public health crises. A comparison of sentiments in translations by the government aligns with previous research, revealing a less favorable depiction of translated texts compared to the source texts. Furthermore, the commonality index, a measure of group consensus value, surpasses the typical range, while the certainty index, a measure of confidence, slightly falls below the norm. These findings offer valuable insights for policy considerations while highlighting areas for international communication and understanding improvement.
{"title":"Sentiment analysis of tweets and government translations: Assessing China’s post-COVID-19 landscape for signs of withering or booming","authors":"Huan Wang, Xiaohui Wang","doi":"10.1177/20594364231181745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231181745","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to gain insights into the prevailing public sentiment during the policy relaxation period by examining whether the post-COVID-19 landscape reflects signs of withering or booming conditions. Employing methods from natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), the analysis reveals a predominance of positive sentiment from December 7, 2022 to May 17, 2023, indicative of an optimistic perspective and a potentially flourishing environment. A predictive model based on logistic regression emerges as a notably effective tool for sentiment prediction, suggesting potential utility in predicting future public health crises. A comparison of sentiments in translations by the government aligns with previous research, revealing a less favorable depiction of translated texts compared to the source texts. Furthermore, the commonality index, a measure of group consensus value, surpasses the typical range, while the certainty index, a measure of confidence, slightly falls below the norm. These findings offer valuable insights for policy considerations while highlighting areas for international communication and understanding improvement.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77213639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/20594364231180327
Yunyi Hu, Yu Gu
In China, a newly arising genre of TV dramas known as “female TV drama” has become very popular among female audiences and brought about great changes to the television industry in recent years. Under the framework of objectification theory, this study examines the relationship between the consumption of female TV dramas and sexism, the internalization of beauty ideals, and body surveillance among female audiences in China. Drawing on data collected from a questionnaire survey, we found that women’s consumption of female TV dramas is directly and indirectly associated with the levels of body surveillance, but is only indirectly associated with self-objectification. The relationship between women’s consumption of female TV dramas and their self-objectification is mediated by the internalization of beauty ideals. The consumption of female TV dramas can impose threats on women’s well-being and pursuit of gender equality in contemporary China.
{"title":"Television, women, and self-objectification: Examining the relationship between the consumption of female TV dramas and sexism, the internalization of beauty ideals, and body surveillance in China","authors":"Yunyi Hu, Yu Gu","doi":"10.1177/20594364231180327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231180327","url":null,"abstract":"In China, a newly arising genre of TV dramas known as “female TV drama” has become very popular among female audiences and brought about great changes to the television industry in recent years. Under the framework of objectification theory, this study examines the relationship between the consumption of female TV dramas and sexism, the internalization of beauty ideals, and body surveillance among female audiences in China. Drawing on data collected from a questionnaire survey, we found that women’s consumption of female TV dramas is directly and indirectly associated with the levels of body surveillance, but is only indirectly associated with self-objectification. The relationship between women’s consumption of female TV dramas and their self-objectification is mediated by the internalization of beauty ideals. The consumption of female TV dramas can impose threats on women’s well-being and pursuit of gender equality in contemporary China.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77863894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-25DOI: 10.1177/20594364231179750
Xin Pan
This article explores the motivations of viewers who watch Danmaku game streams on Bilibili, a Chinese streaming platform, by analysing Danmaku comments (弹幕, danmu). Drawing upon and extending findings from previous research, I establish a framework that synthesizes different types of Danmaku (emotion-expression, information, social, and entertainment) with viewer motivations (knowledge-sharing, entertaining, and communicating). To demonstrate how it works, this study employs content analysis based on virtual observation. After examining 37,331 Danmaku comments across 9 streams in three different categories (Esports, Speedrun, and Let’s Play), it is found that the primary motive for Danmaku game stream viewing is to communicate, and the distribution of motivations varies depending on the stream category. The article addresses a gap in the research of Chinese game streaming, providing empirical insights into the behaviours and motivations of viewers on these platforms. Danmaku is identified as a prominent feature of Chinese game streaming that offers a distinctive perspective for studying viewer motivations within the context of Chinese online video culture.
{"title":"Motivations for game stream spectatorship: A content analysis of Danmaku on Bilibili","authors":"Xin Pan","doi":"10.1177/20594364231179750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231179750","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the motivations of viewers who watch Danmaku game streams on Bilibili, a Chinese streaming platform, by analysing Danmaku comments (弹幕, danmu). Drawing upon and extending findings from previous research, I establish a framework that synthesizes different types of Danmaku (emotion-expression, information, social, and entertainment) with viewer motivations (knowledge-sharing, entertaining, and communicating). To demonstrate how it works, this study employs content analysis based on virtual observation. After examining 37,331 Danmaku comments across 9 streams in three different categories (Esports, Speedrun, and Let’s Play), it is found that the primary motive for Danmaku game stream viewing is to communicate, and the distribution of motivations varies depending on the stream category. The article addresses a gap in the research of Chinese game streaming, providing empirical insights into the behaviours and motivations of viewers on these platforms. Danmaku is identified as a prominent feature of Chinese game streaming that offers a distinctive perspective for studying viewer motivations within the context of Chinese online video culture.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79854520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-22DOI: 10.1177/20594364231176967
L. Tsang
With sport becoming increasingly mediatized in the global arena that further criss-crosses with the promotion of globalization and Western discourses surrounding manhood and identities, there has been, in contemporary China, a rise of alternate theorizations of masculinities that deviate from hegemonic masculine practices surrounding ‘wen’ (文) and ‘wu’ (武) as well as Maoist ideologies. While such accounts, focusing on demonstrating individuality and individualization, cultivating entrepreneurial spirit and possessing wealth, career success and conspicuous consumption, advocate for a greater understanding of masculinities that call for the diversity and fluidity of Chinese gender roles and male identities, there has also been a revival of traditional masculine ideologies associated with the Chinese Dream, a doctrine established and conveyed by President Xi Jinping, which seeks to highlight China’s quest for modernization and national power while placing ‘wu’ masculine values and culture at the forefront of its agenda. Against such a backdrop, this article, drawing on interviews with and observations of male badminton athletes from Mainland Chinese provincial professional and university teams, argues that, in contemporary China, both traditional and newly emerged masculine values and endeavours are integral to the theorization of masculinities of Chinese men, which are contended to be multiple, pluralized and individualized. With a dearth of academic literature that focuses on the co-presence of and inter-relationships between traditional and new masculinities which are embodied by modern Chinese men, this paper contributes renewed theoretical insights into how the various forms of masculinities coexist, intermix and, ultimately, negotiate with one another to reconstruct Chinese contemporary masculinities, in line with the gender order and hierarchy so upheld within China.
{"title":"Multiplicity, diversity and individualization behind shuttlecock play: Chinese sportsmen’s masculinities in today’s China","authors":"L. Tsang","doi":"10.1177/20594364231176967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20594364231176967","url":null,"abstract":"With sport becoming increasingly mediatized in the global arena that further criss-crosses with the promotion of globalization and Western discourses surrounding manhood and identities, there has been, in contemporary China, a rise of alternate theorizations of masculinities that deviate from hegemonic masculine practices surrounding ‘wen’ (文) and ‘wu’ (武) as well as Maoist ideologies. While such accounts, focusing on demonstrating individuality and individualization, cultivating entrepreneurial spirit and possessing wealth, career success and conspicuous consumption, advocate for a greater understanding of masculinities that call for the diversity and fluidity of Chinese gender roles and male identities, there has also been a revival of traditional masculine ideologies associated with the Chinese Dream, a doctrine established and conveyed by President Xi Jinping, which seeks to highlight China’s quest for modernization and national power while placing ‘wu’ masculine values and culture at the forefront of its agenda. Against such a backdrop, this article, drawing on interviews with and observations of male badminton athletes from Mainland Chinese provincial professional and university teams, argues that, in contemporary China, both traditional and newly emerged masculine values and endeavours are integral to the theorization of masculinities of Chinese men, which are contended to be multiple, pluralized and individualized. With a dearth of academic literature that focuses on the co-presence of and inter-relationships between traditional and new masculinities which are embodied by modern Chinese men, this paper contributes renewed theoretical insights into how the various forms of masculinities coexist, intermix and, ultimately, negotiate with one another to reconstruct Chinese contemporary masculinities, in line with the gender order and hierarchy so upheld within China.","PeriodicalId":42637,"journal":{"name":"Global Media and China","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73712162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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