Like many people this past spring, Associate Professor of Chinese Shaohua Guo had her summer plans upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. While she was initially planning to do fieldwork in China during the summer on her new research project, the pandemic made that impossible. Professor Guo recalled, “I was thinking, what I should do, and then I saw this news about …[the Public Works Initiative] welcoming applications, I thought… maybe this is a good way…to get started with this project.”
Professor Guo worked on two projects this past summer with Public Works support. “Streaming China in Times of Precarity” focused on live streaming and short form videos and the conflicting narratives they inspire in China, while “Chinese Classical Tales” explored modern adaptations of classic Chinese tales.
Professor Guo’s research focuses on digital media studies, and her first book project (The Evolution of the Chinese Internet: Creative Visibility in the Digital Public, December 2020) examined Chinese internet culture from the 1990s to the late 2010s. “Streaming China in Times of Precarity” picks up where that project left off, examining streaming and short form videos on social media. Professor Guo describes the varied and conflicting narratives in the media about streaming, from worries of its negative influence on young people to hopes for mass entrepreneurship. Her project seeks to explore why streaming has become so controversial in the Chinese context and has generated such starkly differing reactions.
The state has become involved in these forms of digital culture, as Professor Guo explained. Once streaming became popular, the Chinese government paid more attention and began making attempts to regulate the streaming industry. At the same time, the government also has also become a participant. Professor Guo explained that the government created its own accounts in order to enhance its visibility, especially among the younger generations.
Professor Guo also spoke about working with her student researcher partners, Harry Wolff Landau ’21 and Saraswati Vadnais ’22. She described the experience as a “really rewarding process.” Both students had taken multiple classes with her before so they all knew each other going into the project. As such, Professor Guo explained how this allowed them to begin the project with “the mutual trust [that] is the first step …[to] establish a collaboration.” This was all the more important because Professor Guo’s project is at the very beginning stages, and she noted that “anything [the] students observed or found interesting is very inspiring to me.”
Professor Guo’s other summer project focused on research for an advanced Chinese language course this coming spring. In the past, Professor Guo has taught courses on contemporary China as well as classical Chinese. However, Professor Guo saw an opportunity to combine her research interests in digital media with teaching about traditional China. In this course, students will learn about China in the past through classical tales and legends, as well as contemporary China through modern adaptations of these tales. In addition to engaging with the media of the adaptations, students will also create their own adaptations of the tales, giving them experience in digital production as well. In this way, students will learn about historical and contemporary Chinese society while also critically examining digital media, furthering their digital literacy, and exploring how digital media can bring people together.
At a time when much of our lives has been forced to move online, Professor Guo’s work examining digital spaces is more relevant as ever. Questions about how we connect online and create community resonate in our own lives as we grapple with these questions on a daily basis. For Professor Guo, her research project allowed her to experience this firsthand this summer. She said, “working on these two projects helped me divert [my] attention from the ongoing pandemic and really made me feel I’m connected with my student research partners.”