"My Culture, My People, My Hometown": Chinese Ethnic Minorities Seeking Cultural Sustainability by Video Blogging

Abstract

Ethnic minorities face challenges in sustaining their culture in regions dominated by ethnic majorities. With the growing popularity of video blogging (vlogging) in China, many ethnic minority vloggers are using vlogs to present and promote their ethnic culture online. In this study, we interviewed 16 vloggers onDouyin to understand why and how vlogs can be used to sustain ethnic culture. We found that both ethnic cultural experts and non-experts were involved in ethnic vlog making and sharing activities onDouyin, and cultural experts took more initiative in preserving and promoting ethnic culture while non-experts were more motivated by getting more traffic and income. Vloggers' imagined audiences included both intra-ethnic and mainstream viewers, impacting their vlog-making strategies, the utilized platform features, and the created vlog content. For example, vloggers taught ethnic language and built an identity for intra-ethnic viewers. Both ethnic minority vloggers and viewers protected their culture from misinterpretation by mainstream viewers. Our findings suggest the potential of using video blogging to address the challenges of cultural sustainability, providing design implications for future ICTs to support the cultural sustainability of ethnic minorities.