Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10041
Christina Kefala
After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital ethnography became an important methodological tool for researchers. In my case, I shifted my research from China to digital China, and I engaged with China’s social media as my research field. But what are the challenges for an ethnographer in conducting research into China’s digital space and networks from afar? And how do China’s social media platforms mediate the formation of relationships with potential participants? Based on two years of online research, integrated with literature on autoethnography, China’s social media platforms, and performativity, this article describes China’s digital domain and explains how social media platforms mediate ethnographic research. Autoethnography facilitated this research on a critical notion of digital China in which institutional regulation contributes to the transformation and production of digital ethnography.
{"title":"‘I’m Not an Alien. I’m a Digital Ethnographer’: Doing Online Research with China’s Social Media","authors":"Christina Kefala","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10041","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital ethnography became an important methodological tool for researchers. In my case, I shifted my research from China to digital China, and I engaged with China’s social media as my research field. But what are the challenges for an ethnographer in conducting research into China’s digital space and networks from afar? And how do China’s social media platforms mediate the formation of relationships with potential participants? Based on two years of online research, integrated with literature on autoethnography, China’s social media platforms, and performativity, this article describes China’s digital domain and explains how social media platforms mediate ethnographic research. Autoethnography facilitated this research on a critical notion of digital China in which institutional regulation contributes to the transformation and production of digital ethnography.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84493563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10044
Rogier Creemers
Studies on digital Asia tend to cluster around certain interrelated core strands, which has led other topics to be largely overlooked, one of which is the state. Scholars neglect the state to their detriment. First, the article shows that the state is not a monolith but, rather, a venue for contesting and debating different concerns, in which various interests collide and various actors seek to gain influence. Second, the article claims that, to a significant degree, the state can create and shape the landscape within which other actors conduct their affairs. It does not do so in a vacuum but often in response to particular mobilized social and economic concerns. This contribution mostly focuses on China, but its findings – as the concluding section discusses – also apply to other countries in Asia and worldwide.
{"title":"Uneven Coverage and Blank Spaces: Bringing the State Back In","authors":"Rogier Creemers","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10044","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Studies on digital Asia tend to cluster around certain interrelated core strands, which has led other topics to be largely overlooked, one of which is the state. Scholars neglect the state to their detriment. First, the article shows that the state is not a monolith but, rather, a venue for contesting and debating different concerns, in which various interests collide and various actors seek to gain influence. Second, the article claims that, to a significant degree, the state can create and shape the landscape within which other actors conduct their affairs. It does not do so in a vacuum but often in response to particular mobilized social and economic concerns. This contribution mostly focuses on China, but its findings – as the concluding section discusses – also apply to other countries in Asia and worldwide.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82401981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10049
Alvin Khiêm Bùi
This article employs two approaches to characterize the nascent field of research on digital Vietnam. I first analyze the source base and methodologies in state of the field essays about Vietnam. I then turn to digital autoethnography to weave my academic journey with digital Vietnam studies and resources that I encountered along the way. In the second half, I use a case study from an emerging genre in YouTube videos uploaded by Saigonese motorbikers. These motorbikers not only provide a record of the city today that can offer points of entry for social-scientific studies of contemporary Hồ Chí Minh City but also helps historians and members of the Vietnamese diaspora alike to identify histories and memories of a Sài Gòn of the past.
{"title":"Digital Vietnam: State of the ‘State of the Field’, Saigonese Motorbike YouTubers, and Diasporic Vietnamese Social Memories of the Republic of Việt Nam","authors":"Alvin Khiêm Bùi","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10049","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article employs two approaches to characterize the nascent field of research on digital Vietnam. I first analyze the source base and methodologies in state of the field essays about Vietnam. I then turn to digital autoethnography to weave my academic journey with digital Vietnam studies and resources that I encountered along the way. In the second half, I use a case study from an emerging genre in YouTube videos uploaded by Saigonese motorbikers. These motorbikers not only provide a record of the city today that can offer points of entry for social-scientific studies of contemporary Hồ Chí Minh City but also helps historians and members of the Vietnamese diaspora alike to identify histories and memories of a Sài Gòn of the past.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"122 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83505793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10047
Xenia Zeiler
This article aims to contribute to academic discussions about mediatization and gender in general and video games and gender in particular. More specifically, it advances these themes in the regional context of India, which is understudied to date. The study of video games and gaming as related to India is still an emerging field, and research on games and gender in India is largely amiss to date. This article discusses portrayals of women and girls in two exemplary Indian video games, and it briefly touches on the public reactions to these games. The article briefly introduces Indian video games and their study and discusses the exemplary games Missing: A Game for a Cause (2016), developed to create awareness about the abduction and trafficking of girls, and Raji: An Ancient Epic (2020), which showcases a strong female main character and her journey.
{"title":"This Is Her Game: Indian Video Games and Gender","authors":"Xenia Zeiler","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10047","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article aims to contribute to academic discussions about mediatization and gender in general and video games and gender in particular. More specifically, it advances these themes in the regional context of India, which is understudied to date. The study of video games and gaming as related to India is still an emerging field, and research on games and gender in India is largely amiss to date. This article discusses portrayals of women and girls in two exemplary Indian video games, and it briefly touches on the public reactions to these games. The article briefly introduces Indian video games and their study and discusses the exemplary games Missing: A Game for a Cause (2016), developed to create awareness about the abduction and trafficking of girls, and Raji: An Ancient Epic (2020), which showcases a strong female main character and her journey.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"241 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75763128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10048
J. Hicks
This article draws attention to a missing dimension in the analysis of digital ID: its geopolitical shaping. After a brief reflection on theory in digital Asia, it presents the most common approach to digital ID as involving judgments about its positive and negative impacts and potential regulatory fixes. While recognizing the utility of this approach, the article presents a complementary framing of digital ID systems focused not on their effects, but on the influences that shape them. It argues that in many Asian countries in the global South, digital ID systems can be influenced by a combination of: technological struggle between the US and China; a desire to open new markets for digital service companies; and the development potential of economic and financial inclusion. After revealing the intellectual roots of the ‘geopolitical shaping’ frame in three adjacent literatures, it concludes by pointing the way to new avenues of empirical enquiry.
{"title":"The Geopolitical Shaping of Digital ID in Asia: Ten Years of Digital Asia","authors":"J. Hicks","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10048","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article draws attention to a missing dimension in the analysis of digital ID: its geopolitical shaping. After a brief reflection on theory in digital Asia, it presents the most common approach to digital ID as involving judgments about its positive and negative impacts and potential regulatory fixes. While recognizing the utility of this approach, the article presents a complementary framing of digital ID systems focused not on their effects, but on the influences that shape them. It argues that in many Asian countries in the global South, digital ID systems can be influenced by a combination of: technological struggle between the US and China; a desire to open new markets for digital service companies; and the development potential of economic and financial inclusion. After revealing the intellectual roots of the ‘geopolitical shaping’ frame in three adjacent literatures, it concludes by pointing the way to new avenues of empirical enquiry.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76105035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-12340139
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/22142312-12340139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-12340139","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135449429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10040
C. Morris
In this short article, I use several vignettes on digital relations in Asia to discuss the spatialities of digital relations across Asia’s digital geography and to highlight the application of spatial lenses to hybrid phenomena. These vignettes from Beijing, Weibo, Weixin, Telegram, Google Drive, Myanmar, India, and the Wa State show that territory, positionality, scale, place, network, and mobility are spatialities that can be used to understand both Asia’s digital development and the spatial complexities of Asia. In doing so, I highlight some of the benefits of a spatial approach in digital relations, some of the thorny issues with which this approach intersects, and the research agendas that emerge from this approach. I conclude by reflecting on the multiple states of the field, focusing on points of optimism and pessimism.
{"title":"Seeing Digital Asia Spatially: Vignettes of Digital Sociospatial Relations","authors":"C. Morris","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10040","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this short article, I use several vignettes on digital relations in Asia to discuss the spatialities of digital relations across Asia’s digital geography and to highlight the application of spatial lenses to hybrid phenomena. These vignettes from Beijing, Weibo, Weixin, Telegram, Google Drive, Myanmar, India, and the Wa State show that territory, positionality, scale, place, network, and mobility are spatialities that can be used to understand both Asia’s digital development and the spatial complexities of Asia. In doing so, I highlight some of the benefits of a spatial approach in digital relations, some of the thorny issues with which this approach intersects, and the research agendas that emerge from this approach. I conclude by reflecting on the multiple states of the field, focusing on points of optimism and pessimism.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85922661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10046
Zhixin Chen
During this era of COVID-19, cooperation along the digital Belt and Road has been explored less than Beijing’s mask and vaccine diplomacy. China’s international engagement has certainly been reoriented to pandemic control and global health governance, particularly through digital technologies. To account for these developments, this article argues that digital health is emerging as a new venue for the rise of digital power. I focus specifically on the example of China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR), in particular medical artificial intelligence, in the wake of the pandemic. Drawing upon the DSR literature and the concept of health surveillance, this article investigates the role of digital health in expediting Silk Road cooperation, and it further speculates that digital health has become part of China’s political effort to reconcile the much-scrutinized security issues and the global demand for digital connectivity. Hence, it is indicative of China’s expanding digital power in the post-pandemic world.
{"title":"The Geopolitics of Public Health and China’s Digital Silk Road in Asia","authors":"Zhixin Chen","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10046","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000During this era of COVID-19, cooperation along the digital Belt and Road has been explored less than Beijing’s mask and vaccine diplomacy. China’s international engagement has certainly been reoriented to pandemic control and global health governance, particularly through digital technologies. To account for these developments, this article argues that digital health is emerging as a new venue for the rise of digital power. I focus specifically on the example of China’s Digital Silk Road (DSR), in particular medical artificial intelligence, in the wake of the pandemic. Drawing upon the DSR literature and the concept of health surveillance, this article investigates the role of digital health in expediting Silk Road cooperation, and it further speculates that digital health has become part of China’s political effort to reconcile the much-scrutinized security issues and the global demand for digital connectivity. Hence, it is indicative of China’s expanding digital power in the post-pandemic world.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"14 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86831698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-07DOI: 10.1163/22142312-bja10045
F. Schneider
This article explores what conflicts over information and meaning-making in digital Asia can tell us about politics in advanced networked societies, using examples from East Asia. It interprets the construction and spread of unverified information as part of near-ubiquitous political practices that threaten to lead to a decoupling of realities. The article makes the case that digital Asia is a crucial site for researching such practices: Asian societies are characterized by a long-standing engagement with rumours, and they also maintain highly developed digital infrastructures across diverse socio-political and economic environments. To explore the relevance of rumours and conspiracy theories in such contexts, the article suggests a three-step research agenda that analyzes the anatomy of rumours, traces their genealogy across complex socio-technical systems, and assesses their pathology – that is, the way in which they are products of, and in turn produce, power in translocal networks.
{"title":"Reality Decoupling: Rumours, Disinformation, and Studying the Politics of Truth in Digital Asia","authors":"F. Schneider","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10045","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article explores what conflicts over information and meaning-making in digital Asia can tell us about politics in advanced networked societies, using examples from East Asia. It interprets the construction and spread of unverified information as part of near-ubiquitous political practices that threaten to lead to a decoupling of realities. The article makes the case that digital Asia is a crucial site for researching such practices: Asian societies are characterized by a long-standing engagement with rumours, and they also maintain highly developed digital infrastructures across diverse socio-political and economic environments. To explore the relevance of rumours and conspiracy theories in such contexts, the article suggests a three-step research agenda that analyzes the anatomy of rumours, traces their genealogy across complex socio-technical systems, and assesses their pathology – that is, the way in which they are products of, and in turn produce, power in translocal networks.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74815620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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