Google announced on its company blog that Chinese hackers had attacked its users and as a result Google.CN may leave China due to the security breaches.

While unfortunate that Google.CN may be shutting down, my ethnographic work in China revealed five things that aren’t being told in the current story:

1. Many Chinese internet users don’t find Google to be very useful. Therefore, a Google withdrawal would not have any immediate impact on the daily Chinese internet user because most people search with Baidu, the reigning search engine in China.
2. Many Chinese internet users prefer Baidu over Google because using Baidu makes them feel more “Chinese.” Baidu does an excellent job at tapping into nationalistic fervor to promote itself as being the most superior search engine for Chinese users.
3. Chinese internet users don’t know how to get to the Google site. While they may “know” of Google, it’s a whole other matter when it comes to typing or saying Google’s name.
4. Google is primarily used by highly educated netizens. And even these users prefer Google.COM over Google.CN.
5. Google is not successful at reaching the mobile internet market.
   

I arrived at these insights after I spent over 300 hours conducting participant observation and informal interviews this past summer with government policy-makers, academics, youth, migrants, and low-income users. I was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (more info) to be a research scholar at the China Internet Network Information Center 中 国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), located in Beijing, China. The center is overseen by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). CNNIC manages the hardware aspect of China’s internet and produces quantitatively oriented research on internet usage in China. Their data provides policy direction for party ministries, information for private companies, and statistics for the government. While my main focus was not on Google (more info on research), the topic frequently came up and I started realizing that the non-use of Google provided a lot of cultural insights into the practices of Chinese internet users.

The blame for Google’s lack of success in China cannot solely be placed on this most recent episode with Chinese hackers. Other complications have started long before this occurrence, such as the myriad of ways in which policies work to favor Chinese companies over international ones, the difficulty in competing against government paid search results on Baidu, and the impossibility of providing consistent service when the government shuts down access to the entire Google site for few days. All of these reasons lie beyond Google’s control.

There are, however, other explanations that do lie within Google’s control in which they have failed to execute. The 3 main factors are: achieving brand recognition, creating a successful marketing campaign, and understanding usage contexts of non-elite internet users. Google should hold themselves accountable for these factors.

Google has failed at brand recognition. They have not been successful at making their services relevant for the average Chinese internet user nor have they made it easy for people to recognize, say, or even type in their name on a keyboard.

• People didn’t even know how to correctly pronounce and agree on the pronunciation of the name “Google.” When I was with a group of 5 youth, I asked them if they used Google, instead of getting an answer we launched into a 10 minute conversation trying to figure out the correct name. While it was clear that we were all referring to Google, the IT company, it was not clear which characters to use for its name. Google does not have an immediately recognizable name like Apple (Pingguo) or Yahoo (Yahe) or Baidu.  I, like many other Chinese people still refer to Google by its colloquial name, GouGou - doggy (狗狗).  While Google did consider GouGou as a name, in 2006 it announced that its new name would be Gu-Ge” (谷歌). But the name didn’t stick and so many people still continued to refer to Google as GouGou. Gu-Ge is supposed to mean “harvest songs”— romantic referral to a  “fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way”.  I guess that Google excecs thought, “Hey if Chinese peasants sings happy harvest songs for their productive crops, then Chinese netizens will use Gu-Ge for happy productive online searches!” Hmmmm…Back in 2006 I argued that the new name was quiet “a semantic stretch.” Even worse, it conjured up images of “slow and remote agricultural scenes,” said  Jin Ge, a researcher on Chinese online gamers. The new name was so unpopular that Google fans started an online petition in 2006 for Google to abandon Gu-Ge. Google didn’t listen. The lesson? When your market cannot pronounce, remember or correctly identify your name, you’ve got a major problem—especially when your names invokes images of sterile hinterlands or groins, grasshoppers, and shaving breasts.

The confusion over Google’s Chinese name also has other consequences: people were unsure of how to type in the name “Google” on the computer keyboard. When I asked people to take me to the Google site, I received a lot of similar responses of uncertainty.

• Some youth would attempt to type GouGou (the colloquial name for Google) and they would reach GouGou.cn or GouGou.com thinking that they were at the Google site because it looked similar to Google’s bare aesthetics even though the corporate symbol is a dog. Since many people, even me, still refer to Google as GouGou,  it’s not a surprise that people thought that they were at Google’s site even though they were at GouGou.com.  Others would type “Gogel,” which lead to nowhere.
• Those who typed Google with just one “O” (Gogle) would get to the Google site only IF they typed in .COM. domain.  If they just pressed the enter key after typing in “Gogle” it would take them to Gogle.CN, which is a phishing site (phishing sites try to get you to enter your password and email in the hopes to steal the information). This is even more confusing because Gogle.CN is designed to look like Google’s bare aesthetics. If you click on “Login 登录” in the top right corner where the Gmail login is usually located on the real Google site, you’re taken to a page that says Gogle.CN Login but its page is titled Google!  As you can see in the picture below and where I’ve circled in pink, it’s really misleading! I’ve noticed that most computers default to the .CN site in internet cafes, so this could hypothetically happen quite often if Chinese users try to go to Google and they type in the name  with one less “O.”
• IF youth did get to Google’s site successfully by either typing in the name correctly or going to Google.com, Gogle.COM, or Guge.COM/CN, it would usually be on their 5th or 7th or even 8th try - that is if they hadn’t given up yet and by then it was just clear that they were doing it because I had asked them to show me how to get to the Google site. It was quite obvious that going to the Google site was never part of their internet routine.

It’s not the case that people are unfamiliar with Google.  People know of Google, but they don’t want to use it because it’s associated with being “Un-Chinese.” Part of Baidu’s success lies in its successful marketing campaign against Google, using nationalism as one of their publicity strategies. It’s been working well. The campaign is so effective that netizens associate the use of Google with being unpatriotic. In this infamous Baidu commercial from 2006 (below), Baidu wins an intelligence contest over the its unnamed foreign competiter who is represented by the white male actor. Baidu succeeds in “knowing more” in the back and forth banter over the meaning of the scroll. Even the white man’s Chinese female lover decides to leave him for the Chinese scholar who “knows more.”

I don’t think Baidu is playing unfairly because American companies often tap into US nationalism with “Buy Made in the USA” campaigns. Google could be more creative in using strategic marketing to overcome its negative cultural stigma in China—a stigma that is actively nurtured by its competitor.

Another way that Baidu has had an advantage over Google is that Chinese and Hong Kong TV programming will show screen-shots of Baidu when they refer to the internet. Most recently I watched a a show on the Phoenix Channel (Hong Kong based) on January 22nd that showed several screen-shots of how Baidu helped a kidnapped child reunite with his biological parents after 12 years of separation. There are so many stories that talk about how the internet, as symbolized by Baidu, has helped citizens in everyday life. I have yet to see a negative TV segment on the internet that is associated with Baidu, rather these negative associations are blamed on specific applications, such World of Warcraft or specific places, such as internet cafes. Baidu itself is always in the clear, whereas Google is not. The only screen time Google gets on Chinese TV programming is when it is featured as another Western company disobeying Chinese laws. Google should be aware of how Baidu’s onscreen TV time contributes to its popularity and reinforces the notion that Baidu is good for the Chinese, Google is not.

But here’s the thing, solving the marketing and brand recognition problem is relatively simple when the bigger problem is that Google’s services are not useful!

• Youth didn’t see how any of the services offered by Google were easier to use than the ones that they were already using. This is because Google operates in an e-mail paradigm while other services operate in a messenger paradigm. One time when I was checking my Gmail account at an internet cafe, a youth asked me, ” how do you leave pictures and messages for others?” I would say, “just send them an email.” But here’s the thing - youth don’t have to send emails when they are using MSN Messenger. There’s a major disconnect in communication culture. Messenger-like services don’t operate on an email paradigm. QQ and MSN users can go to a friend’s MSN Live profile or QQ box to leave a message or post a photo. You can check on each friend’s page to see their last update.  It’s like a mini-facebook for every MSN user but just for your own contacts. If a friend wasn’t online, youth didn’t send them an email. Rather, they would click on the user’s name and write a direct message that would be sent immediately but read later when the recipient logged in at a later point in time.
• One teenager asked me how I shared music with Gmail. I tried to explain that I used Dropbox and I put the file my public folder and then give the url to my friend. By the time I was done with my explanation, she looked totally confused. I asked her how her and her friends shared music. She said, oh I just put it in my QQ box and my friends can go in and download it. My way didn’t make sense for them and my method didn’t even involve Google.  QQ and MSN make it easy for youth to exchange files without emails and without having to own your own computer. We need to understand what it means to live in an instant messaging paradigm as opposed to an e-mail paradigm.
• By the way, this is also what I’ve observed outside of the US in Mexico, where my most recent fieldwork continues to show that the primary online communication method are messenger services, not email.
• Baidu offers really good mp3 searches, Google doesn’t. Quite simple. MP3 is the most common file format for digital music. Chinese consumers really like to listen to music and they are used to having easy access to it. Music is one area of the internet that is most free from censorship and mostly widely available in China. Google did not provide mp3 search in fear of lawsuits from music labels. And when Google finally did sign a contract with 4 music labels to offer mp3 search, it didn’t work. Larry Salibra discusses his experience with google mp3. (Check our Charles Frith’s comments on this in “Is Google Stupid?”)

• Mobiles are becoming more popular and other companies are doing a better job of delivering mobile content and services. For example, several high school students showed me how they could access MSN Messenger and QQ chat on their cellphone for mobile internet. I asked them why they chose to use these apps. Some youth told me that they were already on the phone when they bought it (some were used), and others told me that it was really easy to download when you go the MSN or QQ site at an internet cafe. One of the most important reasons is that most people already have a MSN or QQ account. So when they begin to use mobile internet, the transition to using mobile MSN or QQ Messenger is an obvious one.
• For many of these low-income youth, mobile internet was used more frequently than internet cafes. They didn’t have a computer at home but what they did have was a cellphone that always had a signal. Another example is that cellphone companies have partnerships with Baidu or QQ Tencent to deliver mobile content. People would often show me a SMS of the latest news updates from Baidu. They told me that when they bought the cellphone, the vendor would help them sign up for the services. Google needs to think about how to cross into mobile services because other companies have deep relationships with mobile carriers to ensure that a new mobile user receives content from their company.

So who is using Google in China? Google is primarily used by elite Chinese users while Baidu is mainly used by non-elites. What’s the difference between elite and non-elite users? Elite users are those who are highly educated and can speak or at least read English. Interestingly, the biggest fans of Google were Chinese academics age 18 years and older.They used Google Scholar, Google Translation and Gmail for the same purposes as Western users. They relied on Google for their research and said that there was no site that even matched Google’s services. The way that Chinese professors, researchers, and academics work is more akin to the way that Westerners manage their relationships and projects. Therefore, the adoption of Google among highly educated Chinese is not surprising. Highly educated Chinese users organize and prioritize information in ways that are much more similar to Western users than non-elite Chinese users.

Sometimes you will hear me say, “I cannot imagine life without Google!” And it’s true - I can’t imagine living without my Gcal, Reader, Apps, Voice, Docs, and etc.  Chinese academics who read English would often say the same thing when we talked about Google, frequently professing their love for Google. For these intellectuals, they didn’t feel less “Chinese” for using Google. My impression was that they felt more informed, could access media beyond China, and were more aware of global discourses (this includes celebrity gossip).

While Google may have a loyal following among Chinese academics, they only make up a small percentage of the population. If Google wants to become a more popular search engine in China, it has to do a better job at reaching non-elite users. Google isn’t going to get anywhere as the search engine for the intellectuals of China. 

Google has built an empire of services that work for Western contexts and values. So it’s no surprise that their most loyal fans outside of the US are elite users who share similar class and occupational backgrounds with Western users. To reach new users with an entirely different set of cultural practices, Google has to rethink and reinvent itself for the Chinese market. Sometimes, one size does not fit all.

It’s one thing if Google’s difficulties could just simply be attributed to government interference, and bad marketing and publicity. But that’s not the case. Their services just simply are not useful for most Chinese users. I suggest that Google dedicate itself to understanding the Chinese market in a socio-anthropological way. They should be hiring teams of Chinese and non-Chinese  ethnographers, sociologists, and anthropologists to work intimately in all phases with human-computer interaction designers, programmers, and R&D managers. Google should invest in long-term fieldwork for teams to immerse themselves in a diversity of environments. While usability tests and focus groups are useful for specific phases of app development, they aren’t as useful for understanding cultural frameworks and practices because by the time an app is being tested, it already has accumulated so many cultural assumptions along the way in the design process that users are asked to test something that functions in the programmer’s world, not the user’s world.

I hope Google doesn’t leave China because both sides would lose. I would like to see the Chinese government ease off of Google. And I would like to see Google.CN re-orientate itself to create such overwhelmingly great and relevant services that Chinese netizens will WANT to use their apps.

Competition and collaboration are essential factors for an innovative market.

The last thing that China wants to communicate to the world is that it does not offer a fair playground for companies to compete against each other or against government-cozy companies. One of the keys factors to sustain and increase China’s growth this century depends on its ability to attract capital. It doesn’t look good when the largest IT company does not want to work in China.

The success of China also depends on its ability to innovate. In the last few decades, followers have been favored over leaders. While this is slowly changing, companies like Google are a positive influence on the Chinese work culture because the company promotes a culture of innovation, research, and transparency. What this means is that it values risk-takers and creative minds. Working at Google gives many Chinese researchers, programmers, and managers an opportunity to engage with companies that have different protocols and values than local Chinese companies.

And lastly, collaboration is critical for innovation. If Google and the Chinese government cannot work through this together, then China would be signaling to the world that it just pushed out one of the world’s most innovative IT companies. If Google stays in China, it should think about how to become a leader for IT innovation in China. Some good ideas to consider can be found in Isaac Mao’s open letter to Google to “save [the] Internet in China.” Mao suggests that Google create a VC fund, develop anti-censorship tools, and improve Adsense. I am a big fan of his first suggestion of creating a VC fund as a way to nurture new Chinese IT companies. This is an excellent idea that would infuse the market with innovative companies that are more closely aligned with Google’s culture. With Google running a R&D like VC fund, it would diversify the players in the Chinese internet landscape, increase Google’s industry alliances, and nurture its ties to other IT leaders that may have deeper connections to other sectors

Whatever the outcome, we should not be misled to think that everyone is on the same page in the Chinese government. Like all large institutions, there are different alliances and divergent opinions. The Chinese government is not a unified front that necessarily agrees across all levels on its censorship policies. I believe that there is a lot of opportunity for change. I worked with a lot of smart and open minded people who were willing to explore different positions. The question is are those talented people in the position to bring things like innovation, competition, and collaboration together.

In the beginning of this post, I said that that if Google were to leave China, there would be no immediate impacts on the average Chinese internet user. However, the long-term impacts would be devastating. The Chinese IT industry would lose such a critical player. The Chinese government would appear and be stigmatized for being hostile towards international businesses and privacy protocols. The citizens of China would have less access to unfiltered information. And the world beyond China would lose a critical link to the country.  But also if Google really were to leave, it will be to their loss. Business wise, it just wouldn’t make sense. I hope that a compromise can be reached.

very side side note: aside from the design and branding issues that I discuss above, my personal opinion is that I don’t understand the rationale in the first place to hire a non-globally-minded-connected-Chinese to run Google China. Surely this could be the root of many of the issues? 

——-

Other view points on this topic:

• Alex Pasterneck -  Don’t be Evil v. Serve the People: Is Google a Benign Version of China?
• Larry Salibra - Google’s China Lessons: Forbidden Fruit and Face Saving Retreat

UPDATE - July 30, 2010: I gave a keynote on the Google-China Saga in June.

GOOGLIST REALISM: The Google-China saga and the free-information regimes as a new site of cultural imperialism and moral tensions

UPDATE  - September 18, 2010: I extend some of the ideas I first introduced on digital diplomacy on my commentary about digital imperialism and Haystack.

The Great Internet Freedom Bluff of Digital Imperialism: Thoughts on Cyber Diplomacy, Cargo Cult Digital Activism… and Haystack

i’ve started doing preliminary interviews with youth who are from villages and are now residing in Beijing. I’m trying to get a better understanding of the different ways that youth use ICTs in their village before coming to the city.

Ultimately my research in Wuhan will focus on ICT usage in the city, but I think it’s important that I am able to situate urban ICT usage in a larger context and one that includes rural ICT usage since the migrants I speak to will all be from the countryside.

I’ve been speaking to Beimeng (named changed), an 18 year female who is now studying in Beijing. We were hanging out on the subway talking about her home, a village with a population of 3,000  in Dongei. Her family is financially stable and considered to be me more well off than others. Her mother is a school teacher and her father is a truck driver.

Their family just installed broadband at the beginning of this year. I asked her what it was like to have internet at home. She told me that it was “nice” but no one is really home that often. She is now living in the city, her mom is always at work, and her dad is usually gone for weeks at a time driving his truck.

Since people aren’t home very often, I asked if they were still going to keep paying for the service.  Beimeng said that they definitely plan on keeping it because they plan on surveillancing their fertilizer through the internet. I thought that I had misheard or mis-translated some word - but indeed Beimeng was talking about fertilizer.

Like many other villages, the introduction of fertilizers has changed life in Xiheyuancun Village (pseudonym). The village is now considered prosperous with great crop yields. Beimeng’s family is able to purchase high-end fertilizer. Their family is known for having some of the best fertilizer in the village so people often steal their fertilizer. A few years ago, they installed a camera surveillance system where they could monitor the fertilizer from inside their home.

But none of their family members are home that often. As a result, they will stream the surveillance of their fertilizer over the Internet so that they can keep an eye on it from anywhere they can get online. I asked her where and with with her and her family would most likely use to check the video stream. She said that she would most likely take a look from the internet cafes or her cellphone. Her father would only check in on the fertilizer through his cellphone because he is usually on the road. As for her mom, she would most likely be the person who will consistently keep an eye on the camera feed from her work computer at school.

i find this story fascinating for many reasons.

1.) it’s an example of how rural-urban migrant populations keep ties to their village. For Beimeng, she still felt very involved in the family process of monitoring the fertilizer.

2. ) use of technology in a context specific this village. Streaming video as a form of surveillancing is an old idea. Security guard firms to doggy day care centers do it.   Yet here we have an individual farming family using the internet to monitor their fertilizer, which is a very contextually specific idea.

3.) this story is indicative of the level of trust and intimacy in the village. Beimeng was telling me that as a child, the village was more poor but her mom said that robbery was not a problem.

4.) I find it interesting that they installed the internet,  realized that no one really used it, yet still found a way to make it useful for their mobile lives.

5.) Beimeng said that her father (truck driver)  would check in through his cellphone (using the mobile internet) and her mother would check in through her work computer. This point illustrates the increasing differences that we will see in how people use the internet versus mobile internet. Beimeng’s father is a truck driver, so relies on his mobile. But her mother has a stationary job with constant access to her work computer.

6.) we tend to think of the only entity that uses the internet to monitor activities is the government (esp. in China), but in this case we have an individual household who has decided to use it as a monitoring device

7..) This is a story very specific to China’s countryside as land reforms in the late 70’s the give every individual household  a plot of land. With parceled plots, this means that families can make choices about what and how to plant the land. Families  who can afford high-grade fertilizer, like Beimeng’s, can keep making more money. Within one village, there can be a lot of class distinctions—with fertilizer being one of the markers of class in this story.

I plan on visiting Beimeng’s village next year after they’ve installed the streaming fertilizer surveillance monitoring systems. It will be exciting to talk to her parents about how they check in online.

Now off on a totally different track - Fertilizer is a critical part of modern China’s history. China’s and US’s modern history starts with fertilizer - one of the agreements that came out of the famous 1972 Nixon visit is that China placed an order for 13 fertilzer factories from Cargill.

7th Chinese Internet Research Conference: The Chinese Internet and Civil Society: Civic Engagement, Deliberation and Culture May 27-29, 2009

This was a conference that I am very upset that I couldn’t attend! It was help at U. of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication’s Center for Global Communication Studies. I found out last minute while attending the 2009 International Communication Association Conference (May 22-26) in Chicago.

Hopefully I can go to the 8th CIRC wherever it will be held. Webcasts of the 2009 conference are available here.

CIRC 2009 “is designed to bring together scholars and professionals to examine the Chinese Internet from socioeconomic, political and cultural perspectives. While there has been significant research on the political implications of the Internet in China, we have yet to fully understand the changes the Internet is fostering in civil society, or on the intersection between the market and the state, as well as the Internet’s cultural implications for identity formation, emergent cultural phenomena and social networking. This conference seeks to explore these uncharted areas through sessions on Public Sphere and Deliberation; Censorship, Surveillance, and the State of the Chinese Internet; Civil Society in China - Challenges and Opportunities; Women and Minorities; Civic Engagement and Participation; Panics, Nationalism; and Grassroots Culture, among others. On May 29, a small post-conference workshop will concentrate on prominent academics, bloggers and policy analysts on Chinese Perspectives on Internet governance. “

I am now in Wuhan, China, setting up fieldwork site. I’ve been talking to Wuhan University and some local schools about my dissertation research on analyzing how migrants’ use of technology is reshaping the urban space and how internet policies affect migrants’ communication patterns. Before I head to Beijing on June 14th to work with the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) to look at how their policies affect migrants use of internet cafes and mobile phones - I thought it would be a good idea to travel to other parts of China to talk to youth and families about their use of internet cafes.

I am so glad I did this for 2 reasons. 1) because I now understand the extent of internet addiction as a serious problem among youth in China.
2.) and I have a better sense of the social context of the addiction problem among migrant youth in urban China.

There are critiques coming from the West about China’s “heavy handed” internet policies, such as the stopping of internet cafe permits. But many of these critiques don’t understand the social context of this policy. Internet addiction among under-served urban youth is a serious problem in China. A policy such as a temporary halt in internet cafe permits is an example of an state attempt to deal with this social problem. In the West - we tend to see any attempts to regulate “information access” as a violation of rights - but we do it all the time with parental controls on televisions, internet browsers, search engines and etc - so why we not willing to understand it within a Chinese context?

From my brief talks with the principal of a local school for children of migrants - I found out that the principal is absolutely bewildered by how to deal with internet addiction among the teenage youth. The school serves 1st through 9th graders - and he says that starting at 5th grade they are going to internet cafes for hours and whole nights to just play games - they aren’t doing their homework.

With this new information - i am considering changing the focus of my dissertation to be about technology usage within the context of an urban migrant family unit. I would still look at how migrants’ use of technology is reshaping urban space - but i specifically would look at migrant families - so that i can understand how the youth, mother and/or father is using ICTs. So a new focus would be how technology is used across generations within one family. For example - is the mother primarily relying on her mobile to find work while the teenage youth is using the internet cafe as a form of entertainment and hanging out with friends? What are they using to contact their family in the villages? to what extent are parents aware of their child’s use of ICTs? How do parents use ICTs to secure social resources for themselves or their child? I have all these new questions after my visit to the school and new framework in which to place internet addiction as a social problem.

i told the principal that I wanted to suggest some sites for the youth to check out to improve their english and math - he absolutely forbade me to encourage them to spend time online - even if it was for educational purposes. he then explained China doesn’t have any free educational sites.

when I spoke to the parent’s of children who spend hours upon hours at internet cafes - all of them told me tht they were fully aware of their child’s pastime - however they said that at least we know they are in ONE place and the internet cafe is safer and cleaner than where we live. Migrants live on the edges of urban areas, many of which may not be as safe as these internet cafes.

I suspect that internet cafes are a form of an after-school program for the kids - the parents feel comfortable knowing that they are in one place. I also suspect that the youth do not know how to use the internet for educational purposes - or more so are their educational resources in China for students? Must find that out.
I also think that parents aren’t able to provide as much material resources for their children compared to middle-class parents - but at the same time they still feel guilty or as if they aren’t doing enough. Therefore, giving them 5 RMB a hour for internet access is the least they feel they can do. It’s kind of like the candy problem in the village where I do fieldwork at in Oaxaca - poorer mothers want to give their child a full meal but are unable to - so they give them a few pesos to buy candy to fill their tummy up - to give them a fake sense of fullness. They don’t know that they are contributing to a future in diabetes by doing this - and even if they did - what can they do? their child is hungry - but they don’t have enough money for food - candy holds off hunger - and the kids love eating it.

ok back to the internet and China- I wonder if in a way parents are showing their care through giving their children $ for internet cafes and mobile credit to send text messages.

another thought comes to my mind is to find out how the ICTs reshape urban familial relationships.

ok will write more later - I’m writing from an internet cafe with lots of smoke so gotta go!

pic below -me with Jin Ge, founder of the school and the principal

I visited the school while the students were sleeping - i will be returning today to chat with some of the youth during non-nap hours. you can read more about the school and see more photos on my personal blog post about the school visit.

In preparation for my summer research project, “China’s Internet Policy and Digital Network Architecture: Information Communication Technology (ICT) Practices among Youths and Migrant” at China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), I went to DC for an NSF-sponsored meeting for the EAPSI program through the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE).

I was finally able to meet up with two Bill’s who made this oppotunity possible, Bill Blanpied on the left and Bill Chang on the right. I am grateful for their introductions to Dr. Mao Wei, who I will be working with this summer at CNNIC along with his amazing office of reseachers, including Wan En Hai! This is so exciting to work with Dr .Mao Wei - the person who started CNNIC and established many of the early efforts in China that has allowed it to grow so quickly and efficiently.

I met Bill Blanpied in India during the summer of 2008 for the China-India-US Workshop on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy in Bangalore, India. After the informative conference I was heading off to China for fieldwork from India, so Bill suggested that I meet up with Bill Chang, the Director of NSF’s Beijing office at that time.

I am so grateful for the guidance from Bill-Squared - thank you for all your encouragement on my project!

I am so excited to find out that I have received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant! I will be going this summer to work with in China with the China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), the government agency that manages all of China’s internet affairs (equivalent to the FCC in the US). I met with CNNIC last summer in Beijing. We agreed upon a summer project in which I would analyze how youths and migrants are using ICTs to manage their inter-personal communication networks, with a special interest in online gaming networks.

It’s pretty exciting that these next 3 months at CNNIC will be the start of my dissertation fieldwork. I will be in Beijing for two months this summer! Here’s the title and description of my project below. If you or anyone you know is working on anything related to China and the internet - I would love to talk to you or them! And let’s talk if you are you going to be in Beijing this summer!

Title: China’s Internet Policy and Digital Network Architecture: Information Communication Technology (ICT) Practices among Youths and Migrant

Project Summary: This project asks how China’s internet policies and digital architectures influence the communication practices of two important and growing populations of new users—youths and migrants. I investigate how the inter-personal communication patterns of youths and migrants are affected by two factors: (1) recent internet usage policies set by the Chinese administration and (2) cellphone and internet digital architecture—an infrastructural comparison that is a central feature of this study.

The availability of popular ICTs to all citizens in countries such as China, renders problematic any theoretically dichotomous notions of the “Digital Divide” that are based on ICT “haves and have-nots”—where the “haves” have more technology and are consequently more empowered than the “have-nots.” A central contribution of this study is that it has the potential to transform current concepts of technology access and of ICT usage by accounting for important and specific technological differences in digital architectures and communication policies in the practices of new ICT users in China.

Thank you to Christena Turner, Richard Madsen, Eric Cech, Shannon Spanhake, Kenyatta Cheese, leah muse-orlinoff, stephanie little, Bill Blanpied and Bill Chang for all your help!