Narrating Chinese Youth Mobilities

Book excerpt: This book presents the first major initiative to introduce workshop-based Digital Storytelling to digitally dynamic and engaged youth, both in China and internationally. Conceived nearly three decades ago, the participatory and creative practice of Digital Storytelling has been embraced by public institutions, advocates, and researchers as a media democratisation intervention that empowers non-professionals to actively contribute to the media. Drawing on data from ten workshops conducted with Chinese young migrants in Australia and China, this work investigates the extent to which Chinese youth's participation in Digital Storytelling constitutes media citizenship in both home and destination societies. The findings show that their digital self-expressions construct "alternative stories" that resist dominant discourses of place, mobility, education, and language. This book provides nuanced insights into the experiences of young educational migrants through bottom-up autobiographical narratives. As the first major study of its kind after decades of China's reform era, it sheds light on Chinese society from a unique perspective on the interrelationships between state-mandated subjectivity, personal aspirations, and digitally mediated narrativity. The title will be of value to professionals in the field of Digital Storytelling and will also appeal to students and scholars interested in Chinese youth culture, educational mobility, media citizenship, digital literacy, and Chinese migration.