Remaking GuangzhouPolitical Engagement and Place-making on Sina Weibo

Wilfred Yang WangCreative Industries Faculty, QUT

Prepared for the CeDEM Asia 20144-6 December, Hong Kong

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The central question•A study about geographic (physical) places on the Internet

•Ask:

How the Weibo group (EDPF) construct and negotiate the Guangzhou identity on a daily basis?

- How do we learn about a place (nature and humanity) from digital information and data

- How we understand new media practices through the lens of human/cultural geography

Politics?• How and where about do politics come in?

• Politics: the realisation of citizenry rights and responsibilities

• non-institutionalised, and non-party politics;

• no obvious confrontations or conflitual incidents/issues

• The ongoing, and evenrydayness

What is a place?• Not just a graphical representation on a map

• A place is a ‘complex construction of social histories, personal and interpersonal experience, and selective memory’ (Kahn 167).

• Given by natural landscape but constantly (re)-make by cultural practices and rituals (indigenous people’s dance, music and art works)

• A place defines people’s value, believes, behaviours, and daily routines (Mitchell 120)

• A place provides a sense of community and collectivities (a sense of belonging)

What have happened?Literature background and common assumption

-Cities and urban spaces are ‘invisible’ in the age of electronic media (S. Graham 16)

-There is a ‘lost of physicality’ and ‘locality (Crang and S. Graham 190)

-The Internet is ‘borderless’ that it disrupts geographic boundaries (Allagui and Breslow 174)

-An issue of identity: no longer managed by the nation state, but ‘freed from the bonds of the boundaries of the state’ (174).

-The ‘death’ of distance (e.g. Bill Gates)

-The Cyberspace: an immaterial realm … entirely separated from the material, corporeal world of the body and the city (in Graham)

BUT …• Digital media reinforce a sense of ‘locality’

more than a sense of being ‘cosmopolitan’: without geographic boundaries and constraint (Zukerman)

• People continue to associate with the closed network (e.g. Facebook friends and online communities)

• Internet: immediate, local environment (e.g. Open Rice in HK)

• Online information are more localised than globalised …. Social networks are ‘closed’ rather then ‘open’

Why is it so?• ‘The overwhelming majority of people … live

in places, and so they perceive their space as place-based … (a place) is a locale whose form, function, and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical continuity’. (Castells 453)

• Eric Prieto (18):

‘No matter what the starting point … and no matter how much of a tendency we have to forget this basic fact, human identity … is inextricably bound up with the places in which we find ourselves and through which we move.’

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The case of Guangzhou, china

12/5/2014

Guangzhou (Canton)• Capital city of the Guangdong Province

• Population: 14 million (2014) … Australia (22.68 million)

• Social changes: rapid population growth rate since 2000s; 1/3 is floating population … a rapid shifting sense of cultural identity

• Dialect: Cantonese

• Climate: humid subtropical (68% humidity)

• Economy: first to reform; hospitality and trade-driven: ‘China’s southern gate’. One of the wealthiest regions in China (GDP)

• Geographic: close to HK and Macau

• Recent Histories: Opium Wars; Taiping Revolution; the Nationalist Revolution and the Communist Revolution

• Some issues: social inequalities, cheap labor, unemployment, inflation (if not hyper-inflation)

• High ICTs penetration rate and numbers

A different Twitter … Weibo• Weibo (micro blogs), entry up to 140 Chinese

characters;

• Launched in 2009, by Sina.com;

• 5-6 different versions of weibo, a very competitive market.

• Reached 331 million users by June 2013

• Nearly 70% used it through smart-phone

Eat, drink, play, fun in Guangzhou (EDPF)(http://weibo.com/gzlifes)

Method • Systematic sampling

• Sampling period: 1 July 2012 - 30 July 2013

• N=7,625 (38 posts in the first five days are all included and 232 posts in September 2012 are all excluded)

• N=7,355(systematic sample with 95% confidence interval, +/- 3% marginal error ) –every 8th post was selected

• n= 930+38 = 968

CategoriesCategory/label Count

Food 202City Experience 71Events, leisure, tourism 127Cantonese (language) 24Social issues (exclude DG) 58

Disadvantaged groups 39Popular culture/celebrity 51

Human interests 141Funny/jokes 42Expression 35Life advices 178Animal welfare: 27Missing person: 17

Social position• Young, low-end middle class (new graduates, high

school/university students); GZ-born

• Bargain food, clothing, travel, and other lifestyle-related products ($ saving);

• Advices about healthy lifestyle, exam strategies, employment and job hunting skills;

• Gender relations;

• Expressions as an urban youth: the struggle, happiness, hopeful wishes, romance and family.

Setting the tone

Northern people

The China map that is according to Guangdong people

Appreciation - Food

• In 202 posts about food, only 5 has mentioned a waisheng (non-Cantonese regions in China) cuisine; (14/7,355 in total); Majority are Cantonese cuisine;

• Not a single post has mentioned fine dining or premium venues

• ‘The owner is a local’: homemade; simple; nice and polite, ordinary and humble, hard-working;

• The food are delicious but cheap • The food culture is a way of survival that

address issues of inflation, unemployment and social inequalities.

Appreciation -Entertainment/leisure• Recommended travel destination:

1. Guangdong 2. HK, 3. Others , 4. inland cities

(close by, easy and cheap to travel … same as food)

• HK and TW’s celebrities and media products;

• Japanese and Korean, and global celebrity and productions (e.g. David Beckham; LeBron James; Despicable Me 2; One Piece; Backstreet Boys);

• ‘Who’s concert do you want to go to?’

124 out of184 comments chose non-mainland singer; more than half of the 124 chose Cantonese pop stars

- Who is your favour TVB actress? (338/142)

- TVB characterises a nice and memorable GZ childhood

Rubber Duck in HK

GZ - A translocal identityHK as satellite modernity – a window to

modernity since 1980s (Fung and Ma, 2002; Ma, 2012)

- Cultural/media products- Events- Food and entertainments- Policies/news (milk powder, border, passports)

Media preferenceLost in Thailand (2 mentions)

Triumph in the skies II (391/107)

Presenting others (waisheng)More ‘negative’ representations through news

The inland ‘others’Negative News Positive NewsMurder  4 Romance 2Sexual assault 3 Friendship 1Stupidity 4 Food 2Physical assault/violence 1 Animal welfare 1Corruption/injustice 6 Charity works 1Accidents 6 Social support 1Children (abandon/trafficking) 5 Police 1

Violence (children) 3

Animal Cruelty 3Crimes (non‐manslaughter/.murder)  2

Poor behaviors 2

Unusual stories 1

Other Social issues 3

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Framing Waisheng• Under developed

• Devastated

• Crimes/unrests/insecure

• Conservative and even barbaric (inhumane)

• Lack of discipline and knowledge

• Stupid/ignorant

Not discrimination but

We are better and it is our responsibility to help them

the vulnerableVulnerable and disadvantage groups are often mentioned

-Disadvantaged groups

-Animals

Framing a caring and loving GZ identity 【爱心广州】 (A Loving GZ)

Scale jumping the local identity

Norms and valuesGreater Cantonese Cultural identity vs. A Chinese

national identity

【爱广州的60个理由】每一条都很经典：1、离香港近！2、离北京远！3、有大胆敢言的媒体！

‘60 Reasons to love GZ’ : 1. Close to HK; 2. Far away from Beijing; 3. Local media are outspoken

Culture (food, language, heritage, ideologies) = right and entitlement

Duty to protect the city’s liberal social culture and news independency

Responsibilities to protect the social vulnerable/disadvantaged groups

To summarise …

• A striking sense of local-GZ identity is observed

• Weibo’s technical support of visual and audio images ‘re-creates’ the cultural, social, and geographic aspects of Guangzhou;

• Identity becomes visible and tangible, rather than ‘imaginary’;

• EDPF takes over the duty to manage Gzers’ sense of belonging, and provides the guides and rules of being a Gzer;

• Identification enacts political participation and communications;

• Political participation is through the daily online consumption of news and information about leisure and entertainment, and through engaging the ‘mundane’ media practices and preferences.

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Thank you!

QUESTIONS?wilfred.wang@hdr.qut.edu.au