Like a “Frog in a well”? An ethnographic study of Chinese rural women’s social media practices through the WeChat platform

Abstract

In the Chinese context, prior research has investigated internal migrants’ and rural residents’ uses of information and communication technologies (ICT), but studies on rural women’s social media practice are rare. Moreover, the role that social media platforms, such as WeChat, play in rural women’s everyday lives and their transformations based on their online interactions lack a qualitative nuanced account. Based on an original study that explored the use of WeChat by 25 rural women aged from 40 to 52 years in Hanpu Town in south-central China, the data explored in the present study were collected during a 5.5-month period in 2015. Contextualizing this sample of rural women’s platformized interests within the socio-political framework of Chinese government Internet Plus strategies, the discussion considers how the women used (and were likely to continue to use) WeChat to engage in online activities related to their offline experiences, thus aligning them with entrenched Chinese socio-cultural values. An ethnographic fieldwork methodology and a social constructionist theoretical framework were used to investigate these rural Chinese women’s daily experiences in using WeChat. The findings provide evidence of their knowledge-building, business acumen, emotive communicating, and new levels of self-awareness through using WeChat.