TY - JOUR
T1 - Guanxi 2.0
T2 - the exchange of likes in social networking sites
AU - Au, Anson
N1 - Funding Information:
The author thanks Fedor Dokshin, Bonnie Erickson, Bill Michelson, Markus Schafer, and Zhiheng Chen for comments on an earlier draft. The author also thanks the editors and two anonymous reviewers at Information, Communication, and Society for helpful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Few studies have examined how non-verbal functions are implicated in online communication and in non-Western contexts. Addressing these lacunae, this article analyzes interviews with Hong Kong youth to interrogate how likes are exchanged in online interactions within the context of guanxi. This article discovers that likes are reimagined as a digital gift of renqing representing targeted attention from specific giver-identities that generates circuits of likes exchanged between participants for tie-maintenance and tie-formation. For weak ties, lower frequency of reciprocity and sense of obligation were reported, whereas strong ties engendered reports of higher frequency of reciprocity and sense of obligation. However, across all dyadic guanxi ties, participants felt a constant renqing debt demanding repayment. As such, participants felt the need for some baseline frequency of like exchange and offended when alters neglected reciprocity altogether, yet continued giving likes for fear of damaging their reputation and relationship. Thus, mianzi is reconceptualized as embedded in interpersonal evaluations of one’s reputation based on how well they maintain relationships and bound up in the social interactive tendency to exchange renqing over time. These webs of meaning and exchange encircle the objective of maintaining relationships by invigorating their emotional content. Here, the non-verbality of likes deepened their ability to replicate the raw, emotive charge of renqing: stripped of the burdensome complexities of verbal communication, likes convey a simple, one-dimensional, powerful sentiment of agreement that, in participants’ experiences, is useful to generating future exchanges of likes and improving online relationships enough to create relationships offline as well.
AB - Few studies have examined how non-verbal functions are implicated in online communication and in non-Western contexts. Addressing these lacunae, this article analyzes interviews with Hong Kong youth to interrogate how likes are exchanged in online interactions within the context of guanxi. This article discovers that likes are reimagined as a digital gift of renqing representing targeted attention from specific giver-identities that generates circuits of likes exchanged between participants for tie-maintenance and tie-formation. For weak ties, lower frequency of reciprocity and sense of obligation were reported, whereas strong ties engendered reports of higher frequency of reciprocity and sense of obligation. However, across all dyadic guanxi ties, participants felt a constant renqing debt demanding repayment. As such, participants felt the need for some baseline frequency of like exchange and offended when alters neglected reciprocity altogether, yet continued giving likes for fear of damaging their reputation and relationship. Thus, mianzi is reconceptualized as embedded in interpersonal evaluations of one’s reputation based on how well they maintain relationships and bound up in the social interactive tendency to exchange renqing over time. These webs of meaning and exchange encircle the objective of maintaining relationships by invigorating their emotional content. Here, the non-verbality of likes deepened their ability to replicate the raw, emotive charge of renqing: stripped of the burdensome complexities of verbal communication, likes convey a simple, one-dimensional, powerful sentiment of agreement that, in participants’ experiences, is useful to generating future exchanges of likes and improving online relationships enough to create relationships offline as well.
KW - China
KW - Guanxi
KW - likes
KW - online communication
KW - social networking sites
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083567172&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1369118X.2020.1748091
DO - 10.1080/1369118X.2020.1748091
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85083567172
SN - 1369-118X
VL - 24
SP - 1891
EP - 1906
JO - Information Communication and Society
JF - Information Communication and Society
IS - 13
ER -