Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

With Xi Jinping’s dominant political power being established in China, a personality cult has increasingly
emerged. In this presentation, I will analyse related online documents to argue that this phenomenon has
been driven by government officials and traditional media, but also by individual “netizens” themselves. I
will argue that the rise of the “personality cult” around Xi implies national anxiety in an important
transitional period in China. It shows a characteristic of what Anthony Giddens terms “structuration”,
especially in China, where high uncertainty and high risk go hand in hand.
Jing Zeng
The Role of Rumour and Counter-Power on Chinese Social Media
The August 2015 explosions in Tianjin, northern China, devastated large areas of the region and killed over a
hundred people, but due to the lack of transparency after the incident on mainstream media, social media
such as Weibo became the major platform where both news and rumours about the blast were circulated by
Chinese netizens. Most studies of rumours on social media have emphasised their negative effects, and
therefore focus on how to control and detect them. However, this study emphasises the socio-political
aspects of rumour in an authoritarian context, finding that rumour can be beneficial in China as it constitutes
a counter-power against the authorities.
Jiajie Lu
Diasporic Identity Construction in the Age of Digital Media
The current media landscape that characterised by digital media is bringing opportunities and challenges to
diasporic identity construction in host countries simultaneously. Media technologies enrich the media
diversity in host countries that facilitates intercultural communications, as mutual understanding between
ethnic groups based on intercultural communications is essential in establishing a multicultural society.
Based on the in-depth interviews with 30 Chinese immigrants in Australia, this paper outlines the new traits
of diasporic identity construction in the age of digital media.
Wilfred Wang
Rethinking “netizen”: a conceptual discussion of its usage in China
This paper critically reflects upon the term “netizen” in China through examining competing notions of
Chinese citizenship. Even though “netizen” is a widely term , few have attempted to locate the term within
the intellectual origins of and the historical debates on Chinese citizenship. In this paper, I argue that the
term netizen is problematic as it fails to acknowledge the multiple forms of citizenry in China, or encapsulate
the geo-diversities and spatial structures of the Chinese society. Informed by recent calls to re-engage digital
media research with Chinese history and geography, I offer a conceptual discussion by citing the cultural and
intellectual debates on the different forms of Chinese citizenship to re-evaluate the relationship between
digital media and the formation of civic identities in China.
9I
Constituting trans*identities (Chair, Grace Sharkey)
Ashton Skinner The Public Pedagogy of Trans*masculine YouTube Channels
The YouTube communities that transgender men and trans*masculine individuals have built for themselves
over the past decade provide a current example of public pedagogy. These sites of informal and non-formal
learning have shaped public discourse about non-normative gender experience, and brought thousands of
members of an otherwise disparate identity group together. While these communities have emancipated
many from the negative effects of social isolation and public ignorance, they also reflect much of the
biopower exercised over transgender individuals through their use of biomedical transition narratives that
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