Coping with the ‘double bind’ through vlogging: pandemic digital citizenship of Chinese international students

ABSTRACT

The article examines the vlogging practices of Chinese international students during the COVID-19 pandemic and their positive roles in coping with the double bind. By doing thematic analysis of the content of vlog videos generated by Chinese international students on both Chinese and English audio-visual platforms, we identify three overarching themes of their vlogging stories: ‘everyday personal experience sharing’, ‘vlogger-generated citizen journalism’ and ‘producing counternarratives’. We argue that Chinese international students creatively practice ‘actualizing digital citizenship’ through dual vlogging. Their vlogging implies a strong sense of civic engagement, connectivity and empowerment, and is conducive to the self-resilience of the affected group as well as their identity and solidarity building in the crisis. Our research advocates for a shift of digital citizenship studies to recognize the flexible, individualized and loosely networked ‘actualizing digital citizenship’ practice. We also call attention to take the everyday digital practices of the international students seriously to understand their concerns, needs and resilience in the uncertain and difficult times in order to better support this vulnerable cohort.

KEYWORDS:

• Actualizing digital citizenship
• Chinese international students
• double bind
• pandemic
• vlogging

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Content inside the brackets suggests the student vlogger uses different account names on YouTube and Bilibili.