Project leader: Shubo Li
A post 'Me and my Girlfriend' (2005) from Tianya Forum in the Chinese web consists 60 photos of a young couple, giving a structured narrative of their love story:
This research aims to find out how youth from different socio-cultural realities develop and make sense of their own online self-representation. It is a comparative study using qualitative methodology. Two groups of Chinese and Norwegian youth between 16-24 with experience of telling their stories in online forum/ blog/ social network sites/ image and video sharing sites will be interviewed about their choice of self-made media and content strategy, as well as their perception of audience, privacy and publicness. The research intends to evaluate the degree of publicness of the digital self-representations produced by the supposedly democratic ICT-powered self-media in different societies.
Digital self-representation refers to the constant construction of self image on the Internet using participative web tools such as blog, social networking sites, personal space, and online forums. Communication technologies are deemed democratic and empowering. The overt political use of the participative web tools is believed revolutionary, subversive and emancipating, serving as a powerful weapon of grassroots media and citizen journalism, whereas personal interest oriented use of the web tools are also regarded as resetting the boundaries of private and public sphere. This study emerges as part of a bigger effort to evaluate the degree of publicness among the young authors of digital self-representations, who themselves are work in progress. It aims to understand to what extent we can say an agency is fostered through the digital narrative production.
Presentations
Li, S. (2009) Contextualizing the "publicness" in self-made media: Young persons digital self-presentation in Norway and China. Presentation prepared for the Mediatized Stories preconference on 'The presentation of self in everyday digital life', London: University of Westminster, 2 September.
Li, S. (2009) The online me: a comparative study of digital self-representation among youth in Norway and China. Presentation prepared for the 'Creativity and Innovation in Chinese Media' conference. London: University of Westminster, 22-23 June.
Li, S. (2009) Communal space in transition: Rethinking individualism in China in the age of the Internet. Presentation at the seminar 'On Chinese Digital Media and Journalism'. Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, 15 May.