****Apologies for any cross posting **** ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Online Book Launch: Social Media in Industrial China and Social Media in Rural China Date: Tuesday 13 Sep 2016 Time: * London: 3 pm - 4 pm BST (UTC+1 hour) * New York: 10 am - 11 am EDT (UTC-4 hours) * Los Angeles: 7 am - 8 am PDT (UTC-7 hours) * Hong Kong: 10 pm - 11 pm HKT (UTC+8 hours) Register today: http://bit.ly/2b1mVuA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Professor Daniel Miller (UCL Anthropology), Xinyuan Wang (UCL Anthropology) and Tom McDonald (HKU Sociology) for a live and interactive discussion about UCL's groundbreaking Why We Post project. Streamed on Youtube, and hosted by HKU Sociology, this exciting discussion will mark the launch of two brand new Open Access volumes Social Media in Industrial China (UCL Press) and Social Media in Rural China (UCL Press), which detail they key findings of the Chinese section of the UCL Why We Post project. Put your own questions to the authors, and hear them discuss their experiences of conducting ethnographic fieldwork on social media use in China, writing their books, and how the unique case of China has implications for understanding social media use around the world. Register today: http://bit.ly/2b1mVuA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- About the books Wang's Social Media in Industrial China describes social media's role in the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Wang describes a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise 'homeless'. Find out more: http://bit.ly/2b1qAT7 McDonald's Social Media in Rural China argues that social media allows rural Chinese people to extend and transform their social relationships by deepening already existing connections with friends known through their school, work or village, while also experimenting with completely new forms of relationships through online interactions with strangers. By juxtaposing these seemingly opposed relations, rural social media users are able to use these technologies to understand, capitalise on and challenge the notions of morality that underlie rural life. Find out more: http://bit.ly/2b3w3sK --------------------------------------------------------------------------