This volume uses “Networked China” as a lens to explore a complex communication landscape,

characterized by digital platforms, algorithms, and global connectivity. Essays and

empirical case studies cover issues of digital labor, cybernationalism, gaming, disinformation,

fan culture, technology entrepreneurs, and the value of digital repositories in preserving

collective memory.

The contributions to this book explore the complex communication landscape of China,

conceptualized as a global assemblage of technology, norms, and socio-cultural structures.

Exploring these digital networks reveals the contradictions between connectivity and control,

pushing beyond conceptions of the authoritarian system to better understand in these

mediated spaces the sensitive terms of “citizen” and “civic.” Asking “what” and “where” is

China and “how” do we know China, contributors situate their insights in local cultural

contexts but against the background of China-global entanglements.

Understanding a networked China confronts the challenges to researchers of access, political

sensitivities, and over-reliance on digital trace data. Emphasizing a mixed methods

approach, the studies in this volume provide creative approaches to such challenges at a

deeper level of complexity, opening the “black box” to find emerging spaces and connections,

within and without China, that are not always self-evident from the outside using

more conventional conceptual categories.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Information, Communication & Society.