SO CI Tom McDonald China’s distinctive social media platforms have gained notable popularity among the nation’s vast number of AL MED 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 I suggest that, far from being left behind, many rural A Chinese people have already integrated social media into their everyday experience. I N SOCIAL Throughout his ground-breaking study, McDonald R argues that social media allows rural people to extend U R and transform their social relationships by deepening AL CH MEDIA already existing connections with friends known through their school, work or village, while also experimenting with completely new forms of relationships through I online interactions with strangers. By juxtaposing these NA 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. TOM MCDONALD is Assistant Professor in the IN RURAL Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD in Anthropology from UCL in 2013 and has published numerous academic articles on internet use Mc and consumption practices in China. D CHINA onald COVER DESIGN: Rawshock design Free open access versions available from www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press £35.00 Social Media in Rural China Social Media in Rural China Social Networks and Moral Frameworks Tom McDonald First published in 2016 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press Text © Tom McDonald, 2016 Images © Tom McDonald, 2016 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and non-commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated. Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/ ISBN: 978– 1– 910634– 67– 7 Hbk.) ISBN: 978– 1– 910634– 68– 4 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978– 1– 910634– 69– 1 (PDF) ISBN: 978– 1– 910634– 70– 7 (epub) ISBN: 978– 1– 910634– 71– 4 (mobi) ISBN: 978– 1– 911307– 31– 0 (html) DOI: 10.14324/ 111.9781910634691 Introduction to the series Why We Post This book is one of a series of 11 titles. Nine are monographs devoted to specific field sites (including this one) in Brazil, Chile, China, England, India, Italy, Trinidad and Turkey – they will be published in 2016– 17. The series also includes a comparative book about all of our findings, published to accompany this title, and a book which contrasts the visu- als that people post on Facebook in this same English field site with those on our Trinidadian field site. When we tell people that we have written nine monographs about social media around the world, and that they all have the same chap- ter headings (apart from Chapter 5), they are concerned about potential repetition. However, if you decide to read several of these books (which we very much hope you do), you will see that this device has been help- ful in showing the precise opposite. Each book is as individual and dis- tinct as if it were on an entirely different topic. This is perhaps our single most important finding. Most studies of the internet and social media are based on research methods that assume we can generalise across different groups. We look at tweets in one place and write about ‘Twitter’. We conduct tests about social media and friendship in one population, and then write on this topic as if friendship means the same thing for all populations. By presenting nine books with the same chapter headings, you can judge for yourselves what kinds of generalisations are, or are not, possible. Our intention is not to evaluate social media either positively or negatively. The purpose is educational, providing detailed evidence of what social media has become in each place, and the local consequences, including local evaluations. Each book is based on 15 months of research during which time most of the anthropologists lived, worked and interacted with people, always in the local language. Yet they differ from the dominant tradition of writing social science books. Firstly they do not engage with the aca- demic literatures on social media. It would be highly repetitive to have v the same discussions in all nine books. Instead discussions of these liter- atures are to be found in our comparative book, How the World Changed Social Media. Secondly these monographs are not comparative, which again is the primary function of this other volume. Thirdly, given the immense interest in social media from the general public, we have tried to write in an accessible and open style. This means we have adopted a mode more common in historical writing of keeping all citations and the discussion of all wider academic issues to endnotes. If you prefer to read above the line, each text offers a simple narrative about our find- ings. If you want to read a more conventional academic book that relates the material to its academic context, this can be done through engaging with the footnotes. We hope you enjoy the results, and we hope you will also read our comparative book – and perhaps some of the other monographs – in addition to this one. vi INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES WHY WE POST Acknowledgements My heartfelt thanks first of all go to the people of Anshan Town, who not only took me in as a stranger, but did everything they could to help me during my field work in the town. Their patience, generosity and warmth have formed the most enduring memories of field work that I have. I am especially grateful to a number of other individuals in China who helped me navigate the administrative and practical challenges of conducting field work in the country. Zhang Ying from Minzu University of China and Qi Xiaoguang of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University helped with institutional affiliations and introductions, in addition to providing practical advice throughout the project. I am incredibly grateful to Liu Zhixian and Li Yinxue from Minzu University of China who both spent three months with me in Anshan Town acting as my research assistants; your contribution to the project has been enormous. Gillian Bolsover and Kiki Wang both stayed in Anshan Town for a week to produce an incredible series of photographs and films respectively; their hard work added an important extra dimension to the project. My thanks to the Why We Post project team: Elisabetta Costa, Nell Haynes, Laura Haapio- Kirk, Sheba Mohammid, Razvan Nicolescu, Pascale Searle, Jolynna Sinanan, Juliano Spyer, Shriram Venkatraman and Xinyuan Wang. Working with you all has been incredible, and I am amazed at what has resulted from this co- operation. A special thanks to Daniel Miller for making the project happen in the first place, and for continuing always to support and encourage me as I grow and learn. A project of this scale and methodological originality would have been simply impossible had it not been for the generous (and brave!) funding of the European Research Council (Grant number: 2011- AdG- 295486 SocNet). There are a number of other colleagues at the UCL Department of Anthropology who have inspired me greatly since my undergradu- ate days and have provided much guidance on this and other projects. Special mentions go to Allen Abramson, Victor Buchli, Timothy Carroll, vii Ludovic Coupaye, Adam Drazin, Alice Elliot, Rebecca Empson, Haidy Geismar, Martin Holbraad, David Jeevendrampillai, Susan Kuechler, Alison MacDonald, Aaron Parkhurst, Vita Peacock and Raphael Schacter. I must also extend my thanks to my new colleagues at the Department of Sociology at The University of Hong Kong; they have wel- comed me warmly and have been understanding while I have attempted to juggle my other duties with completing this manuscript. Particular thanks go to Cheris Chan, Travis Kong, Karen Laidler, Maggy Lee, David Palmer and Tommy Tse in this regard. During the process of writing this book a number of individuals have kindly commented on either draft chapters I have shared or on pre- sentations of my work that I have given. These include Allan Bahroun, Paul Bouanchaud, Inge Daniels, Faye Ginsburg, Heather Horst, David Kurt Herold, John Hope, Freddy MacKee, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Jesper Schlæger, Charles Stafford, Hans Steinmüller and Marina Svensson, and the anonymous reviewers of this volume. I am especially grateful for the advice received from these individuals which has helped improve the manuscript enormously, although any remaining inaccuracies should be viewed as mine alone. I am particularly thankful to the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford; the Centre for East and South- East Asian Studies, Lund University; and the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong for invit- ing me to present and receive feedback on my work in their seminars. I am also extremely indebted to the fantastic team at UCL Press, led by Lara Speicher, for the opportunity to publish the entire book series via Open Access. They have worked with particular dedication and pro- fessionalism in guiding this volume through the production process. A final round of thanks goes to close friends and family, who have had to endure my pre occupation with my work during this project. My own ‘circle of friends’ in London continue to bring happiness to my life, albeit from afar.