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In this pathbreaking collections of essays, Canada-based Chinese scholar Simin Li explores the latest insights into information, knowledge, political communication, and identity in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and their neighbors, friends, and adversaries. Discourses of Asian Societies follows the social dynamics of these East Asian nations and reflects their recent political discourses and civil practices, grouped into four themes: memory and diaspora, civil practice and discourse in China, political discourses in Hong Kong, and youth identity and nationalism in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The theme of memory and diaspora uses interpretive narratives to present, in one study, the motivations of five Chinese immigrants to leave their homeland. Data was collected from Zhihu, the Chinese version of the popular internet site Quora, as used in Singapore, Canada, Brazil, Finland, and Australia. The second study explores how international students enrolled in Taiwan’s universities relieved homesickness by searching for information online.
The book’s appreciation of civil practice and discourse emerges from a study of how a Chinese rural library developed under the leadership of a non-government organization and an analysis of the relations between a think tank’s research and social agenda, as presented in its publications and related news reports.
The third theme’s focus on Hong Kong uses Facebook to observe an opinion leader’s routine communication and dissemination of political issues. A supplementary study assesses opinion leaders’ online behavior during legislative council elections.
Finally, the book offers an understanding of modern youth through a comparative study of expression and performance in Taiwan and Hong Kong, via social media and a more traditional comparative analysis of the similarities and differences of national groups of young people via big data.
