[Air-L] Two new open access books about social media in China from UCL Why We Post

[Major, Alison]

***Apologies for any cross posting***



UCL Press is delighted to announce two new open access books that may be of interest to members of this list: Social Media in Industrial China and Social Media in Rural China.



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Social Media in Industrial China

Xinyuan Wang
Download free: http://bit.ly/2d1R10Y

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Described as the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Xinyuan Wang spent 15 months living among a community of these migrants in a small factory town in southeast China to track their use of social media. It was here she witnessed a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise 'homeless'.



Wang's fascinating study explores the full range of preconceptions commonly held about Chinese people - their relationship with education, with family, with politics, with 'home' - and argues why, for this vast population, it is time to reassess what we think we know about contemporary China and the evolving role of social media.


Download free: http://bit.ly/2d1R10Y



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Social Media in Rural China

Tom McDonald

Download free: http://bit.ly/2d5lwPs

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China's distinctive social media platforms have gained notable popularity among the nation's vast number of internet users, but has China's countryside been 'left behind' in this communication revolution?



Tom McDonald spent 15 months living in a small rural Chinese community researching how the residents use social media in their daily lives. His ethnographic findings suggest that, far from being left behind, social media is already deeply integrated into the everyday experience of many rural Chinese people.



Throughout his ground-breaking study, McDonald argues that social media allows rural people to extend and transform their social relationships by deepening already existing connections with friends known through their school, work or village, while also experimenting with completely new forms of relationships through online interactions with strangers. By juxtaposing these seemingly opposed relations, rural social media users are able to use these technologies to understand, capitalise on and challenge the notions of morality that underlie rural life.



Download free: http://bit.ly/2d5lwPs



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About Why We Post



Why do we post on social media? Is it true that we are replacing face-to-face relationships with on-screen life? Are we becoming more narcissistic with the rise of selfies? Does social media create or suppress political action, destroy privacy or become the only way to sell something? And are these claims equally true for a factory worker in China and an IT professional in India? With these questions in mind, nine anthropologists each spent 15 months living in communities in China, Brazil, Turkey, Chile, India, England, Italy and Trinidad. They studied not only platforms but the content of social media to understand both why we post and the consequences of social media on our lives. Their findings indicate that social media is more than communication - it is also a place where we now live. To find out more, visit http://www.ucl.ac.uk/why-we-post



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