{"title":"Digital inequalities and public health during COVID-19: media dependency and vaccination","authors":"Grant Blank, Bianca C. Reisdorf","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2023.2166356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2023.2166356","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 pandemic information about the transmission of the virus came out slowly and recommended practices changed over time. This made communication media, like the Internet, especially important. Few prior studies have considered how digital inequalities influence information flows. Building on three research streams – vaccine hesitancy, information-seeking, and digital inequalities – we examine how digital inequalities, health media, and mass media affect COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Using representative survey data of US Internet users, our structural equation model demonstrates the importance of digital inequalities and media use for vaccine hesitancy. Digital inclusion plays an important role in public health. It leads to increased health information-seeking, which reduces vaccine hesitancy. Our model presents evidence supporting a comprehensive policy approach to vaccine hesitancy beyond factors like socio-demographics and prior health beliefs to include broader factors like digital equity measures and sources of health information. Where and how people find information on public health issues seems to be as important as demographics.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"1045 - 1065"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45985658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"GitHub as a collaborative curation platform for memory projects of COVID-19 in China","authors":"E. Han","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161828","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study looks at online collaborative memory projects on GitHub, all of which started amid China’s war on the then unknown corona virus in early 2020 and curated stories from Chinese language social media, news outlets, and official websites. It finds that GitHub enables a collaborative yet centralized archiving and curation workflow, and each of the three projects present unique ways the COVID-19 memories can be preserved. Three key events – the lockdown of Wuhan, the death of the whistleblowing doctor, and the controversy over Fang Fang’s diaries – are further analyzed to show how these memory projects could form narratives that post challenge to the officially sanctioned version of the ‘correct’ collective memory.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"340 - 355"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43507211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘China’ as a ‘Black Box?’ Rethinking methods through a sociotechnical perspective","authors":"Yuchen Chen, A. Lu, A. Wu","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2159488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2159488","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Amid the ongoing pandemic and the so-called ‘New Cold War,’ physical mobility dwindles and political paranoia surges. China has been increasingly portrayed as a ‘black box’ in anglophone discourse, scholarly and popular alike. More than ever, digital platforms serve as the sites and means to know ‘the Chinese reality.’ In this paper, we mobilize insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), especially its epistemological and ontological reflections on the ‘black box’ metaphor, to confront the ongoing ‘blackboxing’ of China and, in tandem, the embrace of digital platform data as ‘open source’ to penetrate China from afar. Foregrounding the role of technological infrastructures, research positionality, and power relations in knowledge production, we situate this phenomenon in broader shifts in geopolitics and academic ecology. We then suggest alternative routes for empirical investigation: (1) to reembed Chinese platform data in their sociotechnical contexts, (2) to approach a ‘networked China’ at and across different scales, and relatedly, (3) to attune to obscured positionalities in fieldwork and analysis. Ultimately, we urge communities of China researchers to attend to the politics and materiality of knowledge production and resist the pervading ‘New Cold War’ framing.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"253 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43285532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Push-and-pull’ for visibility: how do fans as users negotiate over algorithms with Chinese digital platforms?","authors":"Yiyan Zhang, Shengchun Huang, Tong Li","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161829","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the algorithmic era, both users and the platform battle for visibility. Chinese fans are savvy users who explore the hidden algorithms behind platform functions. With the collectively developed algorithmic imaginary, digital fandom communities negotiate with the platform over algorithms to optimize the visibility of celebrities they endorse. Drawing from participatory observation and semi-structured interviews in Chinese online fandoms of an idol group, INTO1, we detailed how fans as digital users collectively explore, interpret, and creatively utilize algorithms to increase their idol’s visibility. We conclude that visibility, as a representation of algorithm power, is co-defined through the constant push-and-pull between digital users and the platform. This paper contributes to both algorithm and fandom studies by describing large-scale non-professional users’ daily construction of the algorithmic imaginary in the unique context of Chinese fandom and beyond. It also discusses broader civic implications of fans’ algorithmic practices to wider digital users in China.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"321 - 339"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46842144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Politicizing for the idol: China’s idol fandom nationalism in pandemic","authors":"Yan Wang, Ting Luo","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161827","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Chinese idol fans have been identified among the main forces in cyber nationalist activisms in recent years, acting as the nationalist fans protecting the state as an idol in response to external political shocks. Their skills in acknowledging, involving, and even reinventing the image of the state and national pride in cyber nationalist activisms do not emerge in a vacuum. This article examines how idol fans involve and reinvent the nationalist discourse in their everyday fan activities – idol promotion. We focus on the pandemic in 2020 as it provides a specific social and political context that allows us to understand better the interaction between idol fans and the state in their mundane fan activities. We construct our analysis under the computational grounded theory framework with over 6 million fan posts collected from Weibo and 11 in-depth interviews with active idol fans. Our findings show that when engaging in pandemic-related discussion, idol fans actively borrowed official discourse on nationalism and strategically responded to key political and social events in their idol promotion activities. The idol images they built are not only positive but also nationalist. Therefore, they play not only the commercial logic commonly seen in the Japanese and Korean K-pop/idol culture but also the political logic propagated by the state in China.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"304 - 320"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47148822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Buy now, pay later: redefining indebted users as responsible consumers","authors":"Rachel Aalders","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2161830","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is a new, increasingly popular form of short-term credit used for everyday items. While critics are concerned that these typically unregulated products pose risks for financially vulnerable people, many BNPL companies argue their app-based products are more responsible than other forms of credit. In this study, I use Davis’ (2020) mechanisms and conditions framework of affordances and Light et al.’s (2018) walkthrough method to analyse how three popular BNPL products (Afterpay, Klarna and Zip) define responsible lending and spending. I argue these BNPL companies claim they are more responsible than credit cards because they are more inclusive and have fairer loan terms, and that these claims are made possible by the platformed nature of BNPL products. At the same time, these BNPL companies define responsible consumers as those who make their repayments on time. This redefinition of responsible consumption encourages increased spending and normalises the use of BNPL credit for that consumption. These products, which challenge traditional regulatory responses to consumer credit, are disproportionately used by lower-income families, who are increasingly reliant on credit for everyday purchases.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"941 - 956"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44227781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Extending the research on digital China: the transnational lens","authors":"Mengyang Zhao, Kecheng Fang","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2159487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2159487","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 The goal of this article is to reflect on and challenge some key presumptions in the existing research on digital China, and to critically extend this line of inquiry by engaging with the transnational perspective. We argue that the transnational lens, while acknowledging the vital role of the state, can reveal a more diverse set of actors and their dynamics. Theoretically, we borrow from critical studies that conceptualize and repackage Chinese-ness as Sinophone communities and expression, a more progressive, inclusive, and grounded perspective. To substantiate our arguments, we introduce two cases derived from our own empirical studies: the multi-faceted border transgression of platform game workers, as well as the transnational production and boomerang diffusion of disinformation to undergird the less visible service and content supply chain. We propose that future research should recenter the fluid and intersectional identities of actors involved in the digital presumption, and utilize a multi-platform and relational approach to shed light on the dynamic evolution of transnationalism.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"270 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48389121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Entrepreneurs in China’s ‘Silicon Valley’: state-led financialization and mass entrepreneurship/innovation","authors":"Lin Zhang, E. Yuan","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2155486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2155486","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study problematizes the paradox of coexisting market dynamisms and the strong state in China’s ICT industry through an empirical inquiry into the history and practices of ICT entrepreneurship in Beijing’s Zhongguancun (ZGC), an alternative geo-imaginary to that of Silicon Valley. Drawing on archival research as well as interviews and participant observations between 2015 and 2020, we situate the post-2008 rise of ICT entrepreneurship in ZGC in the history of its decades-long transformation. We highlight two new ways in which the state has become intertwined with the market in the ICT sector. First, state agents at various levels have transformed themselves into ‘market agencies,’ acting through the market instead of governing it at a distance. Second, the state has increasingly taken a financialized approach to ICT governance, assuming the role of a capital investor to guide and facilitate rather than directly managing a market-driven entrepreneurial economy. We show how these macro political economic shifts have shaped mezzo level institutional changes and the micro, lived experiences of entrepreneurs variously situated along the elite-grassroots spectrum in ZGC, who rode waves of ‘mass entrepreneurship and innovation’ under the current Xi-Li administration.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"286 - 303"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45610045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Storing data on the margins: making state and infrastructure in Southwest China","authors":"Darcy Pan","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2077125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2077125","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Examining the emerging data center industry in Guizhou, Southwest China, this article investigates the infrastructure-making processes that are initiated to implement cloud infrastructures, and how they are mobilized to reconfigure Guizhou’s nature. It discusses how these processes have come about in tandem with the expansion of China’s cloud geography, and how they are impacting the region. Contextualizing and historicizing these processes, this article argues that the developing data center industry in Guizhou is part of the broader process of state-building. These processes of implementing cloud infrastructure in Guizhou lead to the co-production of further state legitimation and continued marginalization of Guizhou, thus calling into question the common claim that technology bridges economic disparities and enhances connectivity.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"2412 - 2426"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48380172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A new approach to the geopolitics of Chinese internets","authors":"J. Qiu, Philip S. Yu, Elisa Oreglia","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2136856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2136856","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This introductory essay summarizes how our understanding of Chinese internets – in the plural – has shifted in the past two decades. The incumbent approach sees ‘Chinese tech’ as a unitary and statist monolith, an incomplete view whose utility has declined. By contrast, the articles in this special issue collectively substantiate a novel geopolitical approach that analyzes ‘Chinese internets’ as internally diverse and externally border-crossing; as both public (governmental and non-governmental) and private (e.g., corporate); as discursive and policy entanglements beyond the dichotomy of multistakeholderism and multilateralism; and as global, regional, and local formations that are connected to, but not entirely constrained by, their national counterparts. Pluralist and multilayered, this new approach to analyzing Chinese techno-geopolitics shall provide a better fit for contemporary internet research involving state and nonstate actors in China, including Chinese companies operating both overseas and globally.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"2335 - 2341"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45976006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}