From Community to Gong-Tong:The Restructing of Multi-Sense of Attachment—The Young Floating Talents'Everyday Life in Networked Cities
In recent years,the discussion about media technology and identity in scholarship of communication is mainly unfolded along two theoretical lines.One is to explore the value of"online community"through new media technologies,focusing on whether and how online interpersonal communication through social media can enhance identity recognition.The other is the role of"media sense of place"in locative media practice.However,the research of"online community"inherits Tonnies'concept of"community",and its applicability in the digital society is still questionable.In addition,the above two research directions respectively focus on online interpersonal communication and offline media practice,but overlook the new experience of the"online-offline"hybrid digital city shaped by smartphones.This study adopts a qualitative research method,looking for research subjects in a snowball search way and conducting in-depth interviews with 27 young floating talents during November 15th-25th in 2019 and April 5th-30th in 2022.To ensure material heterogeneity,the young floating talents from Wuhan and Xi'an were selected as key research subjects,while others residing in Beijing,Shanghai,Shenzhen,Guangzhou,and Chongqing were selected as the control group.We focused on their everyday life experiences in networked cities to explore the uniqueness of mediation with smartphone and the new variety of community.The results show that digital technology reshapes the notion of attachment itself.Attachment is rescripted from"belonging"to"co-existence".To be specific,smartphones commingle"de-spatialized"interpersonal interactions with"co-existing"urban experiences,making intimacy and human-land relationships intertwined but separated from each other.Owing to this mediation practices,the young floating talents who use smartphones everyday fostered a multi-sense of attachment which is looseness,differentiation and instability.Compared with the existing literature,this paper contributes in two aspects:firstly,the authors attempt to clarify the changes of attachment in digital contexts,avoiding the stereotype of measuring the new social reality based on the community perception formed by rural society and traditional communication technologies.Secondly,this study unifies the notion of"online community"and"media sense of place"into the concept of attachment.The focusing point was not on the use of media,but on the digital life practice of young floating talents transitioning online and offline.The residing willingness of young floating talents is very important for large and medium cities in China.This study explores possible paths to enhance urban attachment in the digital age from the perspective of media technology,providing reference value for cities to retain young floating talents as soon as possible.
young floating talentsdigital lifesmartphonemediation practicesense of attachmentcommunitygong-tong
万方数据
维普
