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Questions matter, and the way you ask them matters too
Photo: An untrained eye (Creative commons) I always think that it is the strong and inherent curiosity about people that has lead me down the academic path of anthropology. In the past five weeks,...
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This is not a user study
Photo: Frederick Dennstedt (Creative Commons) Our project is about social networking. We all agree on that. It’s also about contributing to social sciences. We also agree on that. So far, every...
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Cigarettes and alcohol: towards healthier relationships through social...
Social drinking in a chinese karaoke (Photo: Tom McDonald) It is 11:42 on a Tuesday night, in the height of Red Mountain Town summer, and I find myself standing in a darkened, noisy and stifling,...
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Why do eight comparative ethnographies?
Photo: Ed Schipul (Creative Commons) I suspect that the initial response of most anthropologists to this kind of comparative study will be negative. Our model of work is incredibly specific, insisting...
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Categorising relationships through QQ’s friend lists, or, the problem of...
A list of a user’s different groups of friends on QQ’s Instant Messaging client (Photo: Tom McDonald) Listing the social connections of a research participant is a somewhat foundational methodological...
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Chinese ‘WeChat’ social media app will make the world look around and shake!
A WeChat user gets ready to Shake (Photo: Tom McDonald) Two years is a long time in the world of social media. This point has been reinforced to me multiple times in the last few weeks since my return...
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‘What is social media?’– a definition
Photo by Muffet (Creative Commons) Having described our project as the Global Social Media Impact Study, we realised there was just one little thing we hadn’t actually done. This was to define, at...
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The mystery of the young man without a QQ number: accounting for non-users
Photo: Tom McDonald At 5:30am yesterday I was stood on the side of the in my fieldsite, a small town in Shandong, waiting for the bus. Next to me was a grandmother sat on the side of the road selling...
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Strategies of scarcity and supply: water and bandwidth
The water tankered makes a delivery (Photo: Tom McDonald) Fieldwork normally involves bearing some hardships, however I never thought that at the start of my research in China that water would have...
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QQ and education: children, parents, and schools and communication in China
Chinese textbook entitled ‘Summer Holiday Homework’ used by a middle school student in the North China fieldsite (Photo by Tom McDonald) In the North China fieldsite, education makes a really neat...
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Two Worlds
The bed of my informant CY, which she shares with her little sister (photo by Xin Yuan Wang) The more that I get to know people here in the South China fieldsite, the more I see the sharp distinction...
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QQ & WeChat: a threat to marriage in China?
Photo by flowcomm (Creative Commons) Writing in the 1970s, Margery Wolf noted the pressures faced by rural Chinese women when they married. Women would typically leave their home village, where they...
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Tencent news: in-app news delivery in QQ and WeChat
Newspapers arrive at the town’s Post Office for delivery to local homes and businesses (Photo by Tom McDonald) One of the aims of our research is to understand the connection between politics and...
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How to gut and prepare a QQ/Facebook profile
Photo by Iñigo Cañedo (Creative Commons) ‘How to gut and prepare a QQ/Facebook Profile’ By Chef Daniele Milieu (This is a version of an old Breton recipe I learnt from my grandmother.) First catch your...
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Social media and strangers: what chatting to ‘the other’ tells us about...
Virginia Indian chief with tattoos. Engraving by Theodor de Bry, 1590. (Copyright expired) The issue of strangers goes right to the very heart of anthropology, and was one of the first things I learnt...
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The Future of Facebook: What will we learn from the study of Chinese social...
Image courtesy of emreterok, Creative Commons China is a dreadful desert to Western social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, however it is a tropical rainforest to many local species. It is...
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Social media and mass media: the CCTV Chinese New Year’s Gala
Poetic couplets hung on the door of a village house in preparation for Chinese New Year (Photo: Tom McDonald) I passed the recent Chinese New Year in my fieldsite in North China with the Wang family in...
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Visibly invisible: you can always see me
The Little Prince is probably the novel which I have read the most times. Each time I read it, I am warmly touched. Amid field work, I am reading it again. My favorite part is the conversation between...
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Online and under the covers: the World Cup and social media in rural China
Post young man from North China fieldsite made on his WeChat profile. Caption reads “Essential preparation for watching football.” From left to right is beer, red bull, yoghurt, cigarettes and plate of...
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“Watch the World Cup: watch the fun and the world”
Factory officers watching recorded World Cup games online during the lunch break in their office. photo by Xinyuan Wang The ongoing World Cup, as a global event, seems to provide an ideal platform for...
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