Kinship In Cellphone:Cellphone Interaction And Intimacy Maintenance Of Remote Families

Since the Reform and Opening-up,there has been a large-scale population mobility in China under the background of unbalanced economic development.As more people go out to study and work,separated family life has become very common in contemporary China.With the development and popularization of information and communication technology,cellphones provide a multi-channel interaction experience for long-distance family communication,which also attracts the attention of domestic and foreign communication scholars on the research field of family communication.From the perspective of family communication,this study explores how cellphones are used by separated families,and what changes have mobile phones brought to traditional family culture and kinship in China.The introduction introduces the origin of topic selection,literature review,problem awareness,research significance and innovation.The origin of the topic points out the historical context of the commence of separated families' problem,and briefly reviews the large-scale popularity of mobile phones in China and the research progress of family communication at home and abroad.In the literature review part,the definitions of key terms such as communication,kinship and separated family are compared.The internal relations and theoretical assumptions between the terms are explained.In the problem consciousness part,three interpretive research questions are put forward: the popularization process and use scenarios of mobile phones in separated families,the norms of media-based kinship communication,and the social support functions of media-based kinship communication.The first chapter introduces the research design,including research object,sampling unit,research steps and research ethics.The subjects of the study were separated families.13 families who had not yet separated but lived in different places accepted the invitation of the study and shared their life stories and quasiethnographic materials of long-distance communication.The second chapter reviews the history of mobile phone use in separated families,sums up the reasons for using various kinds of mobile phone applications for long-distance communication,and then explains the hardware and software foundation of mobile phone kinship network.In the third chapter,by analyzing the choice of communication objects,the "docking structure" of communication network and the dynamic evolution of "family time",the author explains how the traditional family ethics norms can be continued and how the new digital habits can be generated in the practice of long-distance mobile communication.In the fourth chapter,from the perspective of social network function,it discusses how to realize long-distance economic support,gift giving and action support in mobile communication,so that the social support function of traditional kinship can be extended by media.The fifth chapter is the conclusion and reflection.Based on the case analysis of the first three chapters,the study first summarizes the effect of mobile phone use on the way of long-distance family relationship maintenance in daily communication of separated families: the media of family network,the media of communication norms and the media of family functions.After that,the paper summarizes the shortcomings of the research,and looks forward to the future development of family communication research in China.