Inside and outside the Firewall - A cultural analysis of Chinese students’ Internet habits and the impact of location

Abstract: This thesis is a cultural analysis of Chinese students’ Internet habits and how these are affected when they move abroad, in this case to Sweden. Fieldwork has been conducted in Shanghai and Sweden. The aim is to understand the Internet in everyday life with an emphasis on the local experience. The questions guiding the research are: • How do students in Shanghai and Chinese students in Sweden use the Internet in their everyday lives? • How does physical location influence the students' Internet behavior and the way they gather and view information? • What are their thoughts on the Internet regulations in China and how are these affected by moving to Sweden? The theoretical framework builds on the second generation of Internet research that places emphasis on the offline context and embeddedness. The theoretical framework furthermore draws on Foucault and his writings on power and surveillance as well as a discussion on discourse and digital literacy. The research has revealed the effect that physical location has on Internet habits and how students perceive information. When the students move abroad they enter a new context where they are not only able to access more information but they also gain access to a new educational system and social networks that enable and encourage political discussions. In this process the students create a more critical thinking towards information gathering and start to carefully examine sources. For some of the students this changes the way they view the Internet regulations in China and they start to reject the regulations on a rights-based premise, rather than on a pragmatic level, which was previously the case.