"Life On The Internet": A Study On The Domestication Of New Media Food Communication Among The Elderl

The interplay between how digital technologies are integrated into people’s daily lives,how users need them,and how they use and express them creatively to meet their individual needs has been a key concern of communication studies.The current era is one of digital existence,and social interaction and social order are strongly influenced by it.For China,the implementation of family planning policies has accelerated the process of demographic transition,and the large and rapidly growing base of China’s aging population has been accompanied by a significant increase in the number and proportion of older Internet users.Since the 1990 s,the digitalization and aging process of Chinese society have been intertwined in parallel,and the lack of media visibility and social visibility of the elderly is contrary to this social situation.Based on in-depth interviews on smartphone domestication and new media applications among the elderly,this paper finds that We Chat dominates smartphone software use among the elderly,and many elderly people learn to use smartphones primarily,or even exclusively,for We Chat use.In addition to We Chat,short video applications,such as Jitterbug,are used by older people mainly for practice and social functions,and supplemented by leisure and entertainment functions.Socio-emotional choice theory suggests that people’s choice of goals,activities,and preferences is closely related to their subjective perception of time.Recognizing that life time is limited,older adults will prioritize emotional-centered social interactions and pay more attention to existing strong relationships.As the old offline social circle shrinks,the emotional-oriented social relationships that older people value shift online,and the strong demand for social media gradually establishes We Chat’s dominant position among older people,and promotes the creative use of short video applications and their functions among older people.Domestication theory focuses on how people domesticate an emerging,"wild" technology into their daily lives and family domains,the subjectivity and dynamism of technology users in the domestication process,and the continuity and dynamism of the process of domesticating external technologies into the family to acquire unique characteristics and transform them outward again to generate influence.This paper finds that the domestication of a new technology through the family is a dynamic process.This study finds that through the domestication of new media technology,older people learn and understand the food needs of their families and individuals,and carry out the corresponding offline food production practices."By sharing and presenting food content on new media platforms again,they are able to create their own media,family and social images,promote the stability of existing interpersonal relationships,and reproduce and create individual values." At the same time,when the domesticated new media greatly occupy and compress the time of the elderly users,the elderly and their family members perceive the occurrence of similar addiction phenomena,they begin to adopt active strategies such as family supervision,personal self-discipline and mechanical monitoring to avoid the endless intrusion of the new media technology,thus forming a practice of anti-domestication and re-domestication in the process of domestication,by repeatedly reviewing,defining and deploying the new media.