Digital Citizenship in China: Everyday Online Practices of Chinese Young People

This book examines how emerging forms of citizenship are shaped by young people in digital spaces as way of making sense of contemporary Chinese society, forming new identities, and negotiating social and political participation. By focusing on Chinese young adults’ everyday online practices, the book offers a unique treatment of the topic of young people and the Chinese Internet that navigates between the dominant focus on censorship on the one hand and protest and politicized action on the other.

The book brings the focus of research from highly visible or spectacular forms of collectivity, belonging, and identification exhibited in young people’s online practices to young people’s everyday social and cultural engagement through new media. It brings new insights by understanding the meanings of young people’s mundane and everyday online engagement for their citizenship learning, identity performance, and their formation of political subjectivity. Readers will gain insightsinto citizenship in China, and young people and the Chinese Internet.

Dr Jun Fu is a research fellow at the Youth Research Collective, Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He received his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the University of Melbourne and his bachelor’s degree in education from the Northwest Normal University, China. His research interests include digital media, citizenship practices of young people, and media and digital literacy education, with a focus on Chinese young people. He has published in journals and edited book collections in the field of youth studies and citizenship education. In 2018, he joined the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, as a research fellow, working on Life Patterns longitudinal research project.