Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

4-2021

Abstract

People are today located in media ecosystems in which a variety of ICT devices and platforms coexist and complement each other to fulfil users’ heterogeneous requirements. These multi-media affordances promote a highly hyperlinked and nomadic habit of digital data management which blurs the long-standing boundaries between information storage, sharing and exchange. Specifically, during the pervasive sharing and browsing of fragmentary digital information (e.g. photos, videos, online diaries, news articles) across various platforms, life experiences and knowledge involved are meanwhile classified and stored for future retrieval and collective memory construction. For international migrants who straddle different geographical and cultural contexts, management of various digital materials is particularly complicated as they have to be familiar with and appropriately navigate technological infrastructures of both home and host countries. Drawing on ethnographic observations of 40 Chinese migrant mothers in Singapore, this article delves into their quotidian routines of acquiring, storing, sharing and exchanging digital information across a range of ICT devices and platforms, as well as cultural and emotional implications of these mediated behaviours for their everyday life experiences. A multi-layer and multi-sited repertoire of ‘life archiving’ was identified among these migrant mothers in which they leave footprints of everyday life through a tactical combination of interactive sharing, pervasive tagging and backup storage of diverse digital content.

Keywords

Chinese migrant mothers, cultural compartmentalization, emotional negotiation, life archiving, nomadic memory construction, participant observation

Discipline

Asian Studies | Communication Technology and New Media

Research Areas

Humanities

Publication

New Media and Society

Volume

23

Issue

4

First Page

796

Last Page

815

ISSN

1461-4448

Identifier

10.1177/1461444820953507

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820953507

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