A gateway to acquaintance community: Elderly migrants’ collective domestication of interest-oriented group chats in China

Abstract

WeChat interest-based group chats (IGCs) are becoming popular among China’s elderly migrants. Previous domestication research paid little attention to mobile services that highlighted shared goals and teamwork beyond familial boundaries. To reconsider the approach of domestication in the emerging mediascape, this study employs the concept of “collective domestication” to analyze how elderly migrants in the W community of Xiamen, China, use and make sense of WeChat IGCs. Nonparticipatory observation of four IGCs and in-depth interviews with 21 elderly migrants indicate that IGCs are effective supplements to offline activities; they serve the role of a gateway to an acquaintance community in elderly migrants’ lives. Implications for Chinese elderly migrants’ digital inclusion and the domestication approach are discussed.

Keywords

Collective domestication digital inclusion elderly migrants WeChat interest-oriented group chats

Introduction

As the global population ages, old adults emerge as “a growing component of both current and potential Internet users” (Hunsaker and Hargittai, 2018: 3937). In the past 10 years, the proportion of Internet users above 60 years old in China has increased from 1.9% to 11.2% (China Internet Network Information Center [CNNIC], 2011, 2021). Among them, a unique body is constituted by elderly migrants, commonly referred to as elders who have left hometowns in rural areas to help out their adult children who have relocated to the cities. This social group, while being frequent users of WeChat, China’s leading messaging and social media application, is also key participant of interest-based group chats (IGCs; Wang, 2019; Zhou, 2018). WeChat IGCs help them gain contact with people of the same interests, enlarge their limited social circle in the urban environment, and enrich their lives.

This study takes the approach of domestication to explore how elderly migrants use and make sense of IGCs. Domestication, as a theoretical approach, concerns with how individuals factor what at first to be external media-tech novelty to their everyday lives (Berker et al., 2006). While its overall merits are widely recognized, most of the previous studies have focused on single-actor domestication of media technologies within the family and paid insufficient attention to “collective domestication,” namely community-based use of media technologies that mainly relied on group interactions and collaboration beyond family boundaries (Ask and Sørensen, 2019). Given the increasing popularity of group chats, the perspective of “collective domestication” is needed to explore the online sociality of older netizens beyond family boundaries. WeChat IGCs enable users to form new social ties and coordinate with these ties (Zhang and Jung, 2019), thus making them ideal research sites for analysis of collective domestication dynamics.

An investigation of how Chinese elderly migrants use and give meaning to IGCs collectively, in times of population aging, will shed light on the social impact of mobile media, especially for understanding the roles these media play for digitally marginalized groups and the potential for creating a more inclusive society. To preview, this study departs from the theoretical framework of collective domestication. The subsequent section directs readers to understand the technological affordances of WeChat IGCs and their potential effect on elderly migrants’ adaptation to urban lives. Results from nonparticipatory observation, social network analysis, and semi-structured in-depth interviews present the mechanism of collective domestication of WeChat IGCs among elderly migrants, which then leads to a discussion of the theoretical implications for collective domestication research and Chinese elderly migrants’ digital inclusion.

Domestication approach and collective domestication

The domestication approach emerged in Europe in the 1990s to explain the influence of social context on the integration of media technologies into individuals’ lives (Haddon, 2017). Over the years, domestication has been widely used as a media-socio approach to combat technology-deterministic understanding of media adoption, rejection, and use (Berker et al., 2006). Empirically, its emphasis on the process of media engagement prompted study designs tapping into users’ interpretations of the roles and values of media technologies. Relevant research was mainly carried out through two pathways: audience research with anthropological orientation and technology studies rooted in the social shaping of technology (Haddon, 2011).

Along the former path, Roger Silverstone first applied the concept of “domestication” to the field of media studies, referring to the integration of media technologies into daily lives as “material objects located in particular spatio-temporal settings” as well as “texts located within the flows of particular socio-cultural discourses” (Livingstone, 2007: 18). Relevant research revealed how various media technologies—such as the telephone (Lemish and Cohen, 2005), the computer (Aune, 1996), the Internet (Scheerder et al., 2019), and digital games (De Schutter et al., 2015)—were domesticated in family life. In particular, they examined the distinct functions and meanings of technology in different contexts, such as single-parent families (Russo Lemor, 2006) or home office scenarios (Ward, 2006).

By taking the influence of family context into account, media studies have gone beyond the technological deterministic view and heightened the complex role of technology in individuals’ everyday lives. Nevertheless, recent popularization of mobile devices and services has brought new challenges. On one hand, prior focus on the physical setting of home was insufficient to address the use of mobile devices beyond family boundaries (Helle-Valle and Slettemeås, 2008). On the other hand, the long-standing interest in individuals’ independent, personalized use of mobile services was complicated by increasing coordination and orchestration that happen within user groups (Ask and Sørensen, 2019).

The former challenge is met through an increasing amount of research that expands scholarly attention from households to broader social scenarios (Lie and Sørensen, 1996), such as within the social settings of online courses (Hynes and Rommes, 2006), small businesses (Pierson, 2006). Apart from mobile devices such as laptops (Engen et al., 2014) and smartphones (De Reuver et al., 2016), technology studies have also examined the domestication of various mobile services. For example, Fibæk Bertel and Ling (2016) found that SMS (short message system) texting regained its significance in some respects and experienced a “re-domestication” process among young Danes. Sujon et al.’s (2018) longitudinal study also discovered an earlier role of Facebook as a compulsive connection to a personal service platform among young adults. By comparing the use of WhatsApp among three generations, Matassi et al. (2019) pointed out that life stage could explain the difference in domesticating the same application. Miao and Chan (2021) indicated that the use practices of Blued and the meanings associated with such practices also differed according to age.

Together, these studies revealed how appropriation and sense-making practices in relation to technology could vary in different stages of personal and societal development, which renders the domestication approach greater potential for explaining today’s complex and evolving mediascape. Meanwhile, challenges arising from the proliferation and diversity of mobile services still stand. Ask and Sørensen (2019) thus called on researchers to pay more attention to “collective domestication” to uncover how and why people work together to use certain mobile services in the contemporary mediascape. Going beyond the traditional approach that heavily focuses on personalized use of media technologies, the collective domestication approach directs our attention to the experiences of orchestration and coordination within groups and communities. Such experiences, as the next section unfolds, have become an important part of the mediated public lives of digitally marginalized groups.

WeChat, IGCs, and elderly migrants in China

Attracting 1.25 billion monthly active users in China (Statista, 2021), WeChat has become one of the most popular mobile social media applications in the world. As a multipurpose application (Montag et al., 2018), WeChat integrates services of instant messaging (IM), SNS (i.e. moments), public accounts, payment, and games, just to name a few. IM is the first and fundamental feature of WeChat. WeChat IM affords one-on-one interaction and group chats. WeChat represents a closed network, that is, one-on-one messages can only be sent or received between users who are friends with each other (Shu et al., 2017). However, group chats enable communications with non-friends such as relatives, friends, acquaintances, and remarkably, individuals who are currently outside of the social circle. Any user of group chats can broadcast messages to non-friends in a group or “@” them to elicit their attention to a certain message. To initiate a private conversation, one can add non-friends to the friend list. In short, group chats are one of the most effective means for users to expand their personal network to turn strangers into acquaintances on WeChat (Shen and Gong, 2019). This affordance, as prior studies of migrant workers (Cao and Li, 2018; Ju et al., 2019) and overseas students (Pang, 2019) demonstrated, is especially significant for users who frequently move from place to place and thus have great difficulty in maintaining and expanding personal networks.

Moreover, WeChat group chats allow multisided interactions and thus can be used for coordination between members who are not co-located and have different schedules (Ling and Lai, 2016). Existing research of the coordinating function mainly focuses on task-based groups in familial (Gong et al., 2021) or organizational context (Huang and Zhang, 2019), neglecting the fact that such coordination could also exist within noninstitutional groups, particularly groups that are self-organized for interest-and-task-related purposes (Valtchuk and Class, 2021).

Interest-oriented group chats of WeChat, as one example of noninstitutional groups, are proliferating in China (Ji and Zhou, 2017); the shared interest prompts regular interaction and coordination. In IGCs, members foster friendships with each other via chatting, posting links, and sharing content; in the meantime, they also collectively discuss about, make plans for, and take part in various hobby-related activities (Sun and Wang, 2019).

This study focuses on IGC use by elderly migrants in China, a group defined as people above 60 year-old who have left their hometown for at least 6 months to reunite with adult children and/or to take care of grandchildren who are currently living in urban areas (Kong et al., 2020). They have accounted for 7.2% of the floating population in China and embody two characteristics (National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China [NHC], 2018). First, they reside in unfamiliar environments and are detached from connection with relatives and old friends. Second, acting as primary caregivers of other members of the households takes up most of their spare time; as a result, elderly migrants face a great risk of social isolation.

Joining IGCs, in such a condition, may give elderly migrants a chance to expand personal networks and increase social engagement: when living in adult children’s residence, elderly migrants can organize interest-based activities via IGCs to engage in social life; when they temporarily return to their hometowns, a sense of connectedness could still be maintained as long as they engaged with IGCs. Despite the wide use of IGCs among elderly migrants (Wang, 2019) and the positive effect of communicating with contacts that share the same interests on elderly migrants’ well-being (Rui et al., 2019), we still know little about how IGCs are integrated into elderly migrants’ everyday lives. Adopting the main foci of domestication analysis in technology studies (Sørensen, 2006), the following two research questions are proposed:

Research Question 1 (RQ1): How do elderly migrants use WeChat IGCs in their daily lives?

Research Question 2 (RQ2): How do elderly migrants give meaning to WeChat IGCs?

Method

Qualitative methods, particularly in-depth interview and ethnography, are the main methodology used for domestication research (Haddon, 2011). Recently, scholars have realized that quantitative methods can complement verbal responses generated from qualitative methods by providing alternative sources of evidence (Courtois et al., 2012; Matassi et al., 2019). That said, this study drew upon a mixed-method approach, employing nonparticipatory observation and network analysis to present elderly migrants’ IGCs use, which was followed by in-depth interviews to uncover elderly migrants’ interpretation of IGCs.

We chose the W community in Xiamen City located along the east coast of China as the case of analysis based on three reasons. First, according to The Construction and Development of Digital China Report (Cyberspace Administration of China [CAC], 2019) and The Blue Book on the Social Inclusion of Floating Populations (NHC, 2018), Xiamen is ranked among the top cities in China for its level of information development and the social inclusion of its floating populations. Second, the W community provides housing to talents, who were born outside of Xiamen but are now working in Xiamen, resulting in a senior population constituted by elderly migrants. Third, the W community was built with comprehensive neighborhood facilities that afford a diverse range of entertainment for the old adults. Empirically, this means that there are multiple IGCs to be researched.

Nonparticipatory observation

Nonparticipatory observation was employed to yield a “neutral and balanced view” (Cai, 2014) of the overall pattern of online interactions in IGCs, including inquiries about who, to what degree, participated in discussions about which topics. In June 2019, after obtaining the consent of the group organizers, we joined all IGCs in the W community, namely a calligraphy class, a singing class, a dance class, and a paper-cutting class. From then to October 2020, we observed online interactions within these four groups, recording text, emojis, audio and video messages, WeChat applets, links, and other contents posted by group members. Analysis of collected data provided a large guiding framework for social network analysis and served as a recruitment funnel for in-depth interviews.

Social network analysis

Social network analysis, “a theoretical and methodological framework that depicts, analyzes and explains the relational nature of social world” (Sun, 2020: 1464), was then adopted to disclose the structural features and relationship patterns of online interactions in IGCs. The strength of social network analysis, when applied to online conversational communities, lies in its particular attention paid to the pattern of connections among all members in an entire network and the location of each member within this network (Yang and Saffer, 2021). Hence, social network analysis can capture features of collective interaction that may be less visible in individual interviews but pivotal to the understanding of collective domestication. Conversational ties, namely ties operationalized in the form of links between two users who share information (Sun, 2020), were regarded as the unit of analysis. This methodological choice deepened our understanding of how elderly migrants interact with each other as a group in the communication context of IGCs.

From nonparticipatory observation, it was found that interaction within the four IGCs was relatively similar and stable. Usually, a few of the members spoke; when activities were carried out offline, online interactions significantly increased. As the activity came to an end, the interactions would gradually decrease until they reached silence. Therefore, we used the duration of the third offline calligraphy activity, that is, from 15 September to 30 October in 2020, as the window for close investigation. We have collected 423 messages contributed by 60 group members during this period.

These 60 group members constitute the nodes of the social network. Since the IGC is a semi-closed virtual community, we protected members’ privacy by anonymizing group members and assigning them numbers consisting of the last four digits of their WeChat ID. Then, we created a matrix to record participants and their frequency of messaging in the WeChat group. First, we identified conversation episodes. Second, we clarified their direction. If any group member was being mentioned via “@” in a single episode, the node representing this member was recorded as the receiver of the information. Episodes without “@” were also recorded by identifying senders and receivers in light of turn-taking. Finally, we counted the frequency of messaging practices and entered it into the matrix.

After all the data was imported into UCINET, we counted the density of the overall network—that is, the ratio of the total number of existing ties to the total number of all possible ties, to measure the pattern of information distribution. Then, the degree centrality, the number of ties between a certain node and other nodes, of each node was calculated to measure the position of a single group member in the network, and more importantly, to reaffirm the overall pattern of this network. Finally, we used the visualization tools NETDRAW and EXCEL to generate a graph to present the results.

In-depth interview

In-depth interview is particularly effective for understanding the active experiences of individuals and the meanings given to their experiences (Johnson and Rowlands, 2012). To shed light on how elderly migrants make sense of their experiences of IGCs, we recruited members of four IGCs understudy to participate in semi-structured in-depth interviews.

From September to October 2020, based on the information about offline activities gathered from the four IGCs of the W community, we went to the venue 4 times to invite elderly migrants to participate in interviews. Through a snowball sampling, 21 elderly migrants (M_age = 63.5 years, Mdn = 63 years, SD = 2.89 years, range = 60–70 years) were recruited to speak about three topics: experiences of online interaction, experiences of using IGCs in offline activities, and overall evaluation of IGCs. Since the residents living in the W community were mostly young adults, all the recruited elderly migrants who are parents of these young adults belong to the cohort of “young-old” (Chou and Chi, 2002). We recruited more female than male interviewees (N_female = 18, N_male = 3) as the four activity classes (i.e. singing, dancing, paper-cutting, and calligraphy) were constituted mostly by women (Table 1). All interviews were conducted face-to-face, and the length of each interview was between 30 and 60 minutes.

Table 1.

Basic information of interviewees.

No.	Gender	Age	Family name	Interest-oriented group chat(s)
1	Male	60	Zeng	Calligraphy class
2	Female	62	Li	Calligraphy class
3	Female	68	Zhen	Dance class
4	Female	63	Huang	Dance class
5	Female	60	Gao	Paper-cutting class, Singing class
6	Female	61	Xie	Paper-cutting class
7	Female	64	Wu	Calligraphy class
8	Female	63	Chen	Singing class
9	Female	62	Guo	Calligraphy class, Dance class
10	Female	61	Chen	Calligraphy class
11	Female	60	Chen	Dance class
12	Female	60	Guan	Dance class
13	Female	63	Wei	Calligraphy class
14	Female	66	Zhang	Dance class
15	Male	67	Zhang	Calligraphy class, Singing class
16	Male	65	Li	Calligraphy class
17	Female	70	Zhang	Calligraphy class
18	Female	68	Wang	Dance class, Singing class
19	Female	64	Liu	Dance class, Singing class
20	Female	65	Dong	Singing class
21	Female	62	Qi	Dance class

After the interview, we used the IFLYREC platform to convert the interview recordings into text manuscripts in Chinese and analyzed the text manuscripts with the thematic coding method (Braun and Clarke, 2006). First, we read each line of text carefully, sorted out the logic of the dialogue, removed colloquial expressions and repetitive words, and named segments related to the research topic. Second, we cleaned the repetitive code and further refined the theme. Third, we reviewed all the interviewees’ manuscripts as a whole, sorted out content from different interviewees on the same theme, and established connections between the themes. Finally, we presented the findings in English.

The use of IGCs: majority in silence

Based on nonparticipatory observation, we found that there was a unique interaction pattern in elderly migrants’ IGCs: the majority rarely spoke, and only a few active members made one-to-all messaging with occasional addressing of a specific message to a targeted member. This pattern is confirmed by social network analysis. The density of the calligraphy IGC was 0.3054 (ranging from 0 to 1), indicating a relatively sparse number of ties. Each node in Figure 1 represents a group member. Each edge indicates that there is at least one message sent between two nodes. The arrow indicates the direction of message delivery. Figure 1 illustrates that the network of calligraphy IGC includes a core-periphery structure. A small number of nodes in the center of the network interacted with each other and were connected with nodes scattered on the outer edge of the network. The latter did not interact with each other. They were merely receivers of messages.

Figure 1.

Overall network of the calligraphy IGC.

The degree of centrality of all nodes showed that 42 nodes had an out-degree, meaning the number of edges that the node points toward, below 10. Out of the 42 nodes, 31 nodes had an out-degree of 0, indicating that the majority in this group rarely spoke. Interestingly, the in-degree indices (i.e. the number of edges that point toward the node) of these 42 nodes were very close. Overall, 37 nodes had an in-degree of 245, three nodes had an in-degree of 246, and one node had an in-degree of 247. It implies that the messages that group members received were largely messages sent to all members. Table 2 presents the degree of centrality of the 17 nodes at the center of the network (excluding the technology supporter). Specifically, the in-degree of these nodes were also relatively close, indicating that most of the information they received was likely to be group messages. However, the out-degree of these nodes was quite different. Some members’ out-degree was much higher than their in-degree, indicating that they spoke frequently and were relatively active in the group.

Table 2.

The degree of centrality of the central nodes.

ID	OutDegree	InDegree	NrmOutDeg	NrmInDeg
33	6503	177	95.844	2.609
47	2138	224	31.511	3.301
07	1365	284	20.118	4.186
54	955	230	14.075	3.390
20	357	243	5.262	3.581
40	299	245	4.407	3.611
51	195	244	2.874	3.596
12	187	242	2.756	3.567
36	131	243	1.931	3.581
56	130	244	1.916	3.596
38	129	244	1.901	3.596
46	118	243	1.739	3.581
57	67	244	0.987	3.596
25	66	246	0.973	3.626
17	63	244	0.929	3.596
11	63	244	0.929	3.596
31	59	244	0.87	3.596

Furthermore, we counted the number of group messages in the calligraphy IGC over 45 days (Figure 2). In addition to the technology supporter, 17 group members (all of whom were at the center of the network) sent group messages. These group messages included two categories. One is informative, including notice-like messages about offline activities. For example, No. 7 is the tutor of the calligraphy class, and No. 33 is the class monitor. Their messages were mostly related to the time, place, and content of offline activities. The other category can be described as social messages consisting of content that may be of interest to other members, such as supermarket discounts, local entertainment spots, interesting songs and dances, and so on. Most of these messages went unanswered with only a few times of follow-up discussion. For example, No. 47 shared a message about a care home that drew a lot of attention from other members, asking about its prices, services, and so on. Compared with informative messages, social messages accounted for a relatively small proportion, which was also confirmed in subsequent interviews.

Figure 2.

Frequency of group messages from 17 nodes.

The above analysis reveals that elderly migrants’ IGCs are a partially aggregated network that contains sparse ties. Members’ interactions mainly consist of to-all-group-member messages, and most members remain silent and can be characterized as minimally active.

The sense-making of IGCs: a gateway to acquaintance community

The low level of mutual engagement did not affect interviewees’ evaluation of IGCs. For them, the main function of IGCs is to support offline classes and activities. Therefore, keeping in touch with other members of the class, sharing information and materials related to the activities, and ensuring the smooth running of each offline activity were the interviewees’ main reasons for IGCs engagement. Most interviewees were satisfied with their infrequent use of WeChat functions. For example, Interviewee No. 6 said, “Mastering some basic operations of WeChat is enough for my life, so it is good enough to chat in the IGCs and meet in private.”

IGCs, in the eyes of elderly migrants who now live outside of their long-term social community, are the gateway to their acquaintance community. Next to this, IGCs symbolize their possession of a collectivist communicative space; more broadly connecting to the sociocultural backdrop of urbanization and migration, IGCs also reflect the shared constraints of this unique social group. The following paragraphs speak in more detail about these three perspectives.

IGCs as circle of acquaintance

Interviewees believed that IGC should only include “acquaintances” that could reinforce offline social relationships. Most members had known each other before they joined IGCs. As for those unfamiliar members, they would perceive them as potential acquaintances; their trust for strangers within IGCs was based on the shared hobbies and proximity in geography:

I would not pass on a request from a stranger to be added to my WeChat, but we usually add people who attend events or already know each other or those who live in our community. (Interviewee No. 4)

It was found that social rules that govern offline relationships between acquaintances have been applied to IGCs. Maintaining a relationship with acquaintances who are not as close as friends requires a high level of reciprocity and dynamic equilibrium. The former rule applies to a dyad relationship, which requires both parties to be polite and show consideration for each other. In this study, interviewees tended not to socialize too often online, concerning that it would disturb others’ lives. Some stated, “it’s too noisy to have dozens of messages in the group every day” (Interviewee No. 14), and “I’ll contact them by WeChat when I have something to do” (Interviewee No. 13).

The latter rule applied to the context where an individual maintains contact with two or more acquaintances, requiring the individual to treat every acquaintance in a similar way. Interviewees of the current study were worried that more frequent interactions with one member would be interpreted by others as a sign of more closeness and then disturb the equilibrium and damage the relationships established in offline lives. Therefore, they tended to send short, casual messages in the IGCs or just remained silent to avoid risks:

We often share photos of performances in our dancing WeChat group. If I compliment someone on how beautiful she is today but don’t say anything about anyone else, they might say why didn’t you compliment me and get upset. So I usually don’t say who looks the best, I just send an emoji. (Interviewee No. 9)

It is evident that interviewees regarded relationship maintenance in IGCs as the duplication of that in offline lives. Interviewees held a detached attitude toward fully incorporating IGCs into their daily routines and timetables. The response of Interviewee No. 10, a member of the Calligraphy class, clearly reflected such an attitude:

I know WeChat is really convenient, and my girlfriends update the useful functions of WeChat to me every day, so I use it, but I am not too obsessed with it. I feel like I have a lot of things to do in real life. I like to play the Chinese zither and read in my spare time. (Interviewee No. 10)

Interviewees’ inactive participation in mobile-based social media, therefore, can be attributed to the relation-oriented Chinese culture that featured disturbance avoidance and upholding of communicative routines. By following corresponding social rules while using IGCs, interviewees realized detached embeddedness in the digital world and realized the feeling of content.

IGCs as collectivist space

Other than attending to each other’s feelings, the sense of community is also manifest in interviewees’ coordination for group goals. Interviewees emphasized that IGC is a shared space with specific norms. Group members are expected to comply with these norms and work together to maintain the order in IGCs. These norms are manifested in interviewees’ notion of viewing silence as a virtue:

This group is a big family with many people. We now have had a habit. (We) are aware that generally, we should not send information if it is not related to the WeChat group, for it will disturb others. This habit is a respect for the family. (Interviewee No. 8)

The singing WeChat group is like a class. It differs from groups consisting of friends or families. Sharing information in this group is like participating in a class activity. Irrelevant information is (thus) not suitable for this group. (Interviewee No. 15)

The analogy of IGCs as a family or a class can be explained by the interviewees’ prior experiences as members of communistic organizations such as people’s communes (Renmin gongshe); they have experienced the days when basic resources such as food and clothes were under allocation. For this generation, collectivism has been internalized as a guide of action and a moral benchmark. The word “group” was thus culturally loaded to them. For the group goal to be achieved, they were willing to behave as requested when using IGCs.

Interviewees mentioned that they mainly joined IGCs to gain information about offline activities, especially notifications from the class tutors and monitors concerning meeting times of offline activities, registration for these activities, or taking time off. Therefore, they did not want the group to be too “noisy”—irrelevant messages might overwhelm the interface and cause others to miss key information. Another major reason for joining IGCs was to display the personal progress they made during offline activities. Interviewees often gave positive feedback when other members shared their work. Even so, they tended to comment in a highly concise manner, such as using short text or emojis to convey positive emotions. This manner allowed interviewees to gain a feeling of presence without rendering irrelevant information.

Their inactive participation, therefore, can be attributed to generation-specific experiences of growing up under the national discourse that collective, social good outweighed individual interests, and social conformity was valued. As interviewees viewed IGCs as a collectivist space and remained obedient to group norms, they also found comfort in lurking from afar and observing from a distance.

IGCs as reflection of shared constraints

For the interviewees, IGCs also reflected their current living conditions as a cohort. Certain structural factors, such as household responsibilities, possession of a smartphone, and age, in the interviewees’ eyes, limited their use of IGCs.

As domestic caregivers, interviewees continue to “work” in the family after retirement. They often perform a great number of household chores, including buying food, making meals, picking up grandchildren, and so on. These chores impeded interviewees’ active participation in online interactions:

I’m busier than I was before I retired, so I don’t have extra time to look at my mobile phone. I have to pick up my grandson from school, cook for him, check his homework and sign it. (Interviewee No. 10)

The devices that interviewees used were mostly mobile phones discarded by their adult children. These phones often had various problems such as lack of memory space and slow response, which constituted another factor that prevented interviewees from engagement with IGCs. Concern about old devices was evident in the words of Interviewee No. 3, “If I talk a lot, I will also take up the data of other people’s phones.”

Difficulty in typing due to weakening vision and limited digital literacy also prevented interviewees from frequently sending text messages in IGCs. For the same reason, interviewees lacked confidence in their own abilities:

Just like many other members, I usually read messages and rarely share my opinions. I’m afraid that people don’t want to listen to me, and I am not sure if this message I send is useful to them or if it will disturb them. (Interviewee No. 20)

If the former two interpretations, “circle of acquaintance” and “collectivist space” present interviewees’ initiative in balancing technological affordance with generational and general cultural rules and norms, viewing IGCs as the “reflection of shared constraints” indicates the common predicaments this group faces as they enter the digital world. Shared awareness of such predicaments, however, enhanced interviewees’ sense of community. It is both their individual agency and group disadvantages that render IGCs a gateway to the acquaintance community.

Discussion

Adopting the framework of collective domestication, this study sheds light on the special role of WeChat IGCs in Chinese elderly migrants’ lives. For the old adults facing risks of personal network disembeddedness and gradual withdrawal from social life, IGCs act as their gateway to an acquaintance community. As long as they engage with IGCs, they will hold the key to a small world consisting of people who know each other, share the same interests, and, importantly, are willing to work together to build a meaningful life in the new dwelling place. Mutual activities in this small world, echoing Rui et al.’s (2019) study, are likely to realize elderly migrants’ potential and increase their life satisfaction, thus improving their well-being in general. This study demonstrates elderly migrants’ capability of collectively domesticating IGCs to achieve positive life outcomes, may they be big or small. Such findings join Wei et al.’s (2011) theorization that digital inclusion was made meaningful by those who were able to benefit from their technology use in a substantial way. Depiction of the modes of participation from elderly migrants, who are deemed to be socially disconnected, as well as their autonomous decisions to participate, shed light on the understanding of mobile media’s pro-social impacts on digitally marginalized groups.

Nevertheless, such social impacts may be less remarkable than what the technological affordances of mobile media are supposed to generate. This study discovers limited, albeit pro-social, use of IGCs by elderly migrants. The core-periphery network structure in which most members remain silent with only a few senders of group messages corroborates that IGCs still function mostly as a facilitating tool for offline classes. The tendency of attaching more importance to alternative functions than social interaction was noted in previous studies of health-related WeChat use (Zhang and Jung, 2019) and old adults’ Internet adoption (Paul and Stegbauer, 2005; Selwyn, 2004). The limited adoption of media technologies as well as the core-periphery structure has been widely discussed in the extant literature of domestication research (e.g. Hynes and Rommes, 2006) and network studies (Yang and Saffer, 2021: 2920). Hence, this finding reminds collective domestication researchers to pay more attention to the discrepancy between features afforded by group chats and the actual use of them.

Contextualizing the findings against the sociocultural backdrop, what distinguishes Chinese elderly migrants’ practice of collective domestication from that of other groups, in essence, is the meanings they attached to IGCs. Elderly migrants agree that their IGC use reflects their shared constraints. Pre-existing indicators of digital exclusion, such as income, educational level, lack of personal time, and physical decline limit elderly migrants’ online interactions even after they have gained access to IGCs. However, this circumstance does not cancel their gratification in a sense that IGC groups empower elderly migrants to consider themselves as digitally included—that they are not left behind—as they strive to construct a personal life in an unfamiliar city.

What’s more, this study identifies two distinct pathways through which elderly migrants obtain gratification from their IGC use. First, they consider the IGCs as “collectivist spaces” with group norms aligned with the cultural values held by members of their generation. The young elderly population—as illustrated by the interviewees included in this study—upholds a set of group norms that favor group consensus and the “manner” of not to intrude, disturb, cause contention, or “pop up” with messages that are too expressive or personal. Second, elderly migrants attain gratification through owning a “circle of acquaintance” afforded by the IGCs. The offline connection joins proximity factors to elicit more interpersonal trust of elderly migrants toward other members. Although one-on-one communicative links between members remain minimal in the IGCs, interviewees have expressed appreciation toward the IGCs for connecting them to a good pool of local people who are of similar age and share the same hobby.

The theoretical implications of the study are twofold. First, elderly migrants’ community-based communication through IGCs and their shared understanding of IGCs further confirm the applicability of the collective domestication framework in the cultural theorization of technology use and digital inclusion. Contextualized findings as informed by elderly migrants’ own sense-making indicate that collective actions are rooted in cultural values. Based on these cultural values, elderly migrants collectively determine the role IGCs can play in their daily lives. This result demonstrates that the social context in which specific technology is located is often inscribed into the domestication processes of this technology (Huang and Miao, 2021).

In addition, combining use pattern with the sense-making processes, we discover a specific type of digital inclusion—inactive domestication, which features limited, less interactive but satisfying use of media technologies. The majority of domestication studies have been conducted through the lens of active domestication (Carey and Elton, 2010), laying a focus on how people successfully integrate media technologies into their daily lives. Those who refuse to use technology, namely “counter-domestication” (Karlsen and Syvertsen, 2020), and those who limit their use of technology, known as “failed domestication” (Hynes and Rommes, 2006), were either described as selective consumers who see technology as optional and often not the most effective way to cope with problems of daily life (digital choice), or equated with digital laggards who need long-term technological supports (digital exclusion). This study finds a complex explanation for people’s inactiveness in technology use. That is, socioeconomic and physical limitations as well as generational and cultural values co-affect elderly migrants’ digital engagement. Elderly migrants’ inactive domestication of IGCs, as the case stands, should thus be regarded as an alternative manner for digitally marginalized groups to attain a feeling of inclusiveness. It reminds us to view domestication as a dynamic process that always involves endeavors to balance technological affordance, motivations, and social contexts (Grošelj, 2021; Lüders and Brandtzæg, 2017). Departing from this viewpoint, we may be able to develop a more user-based conceptualization of digital inclusion.

Adopting mixed-research methods, this study bases its conclusion on rich and layered empirical evidence. Nevertheless, there are some shortcomings. First, domestication, especially the part pertaining to meaning-giving practices, is continuously changing. This study only examined elderly migrants’ collective domestication of IGCs over a limited period. Future research can conduct a longitudinal study to trace the continuities and changes of collective domestication after IGCs are deeply integrated into elderly migrants’ lives. Second, this study only examines elderly migrants’ collective domestication of WeChat IGCs. Further research efforts can be directed to more diverse forms of technology use afforded by various platforms and even cross-platforms. Future studies can also conduct more cohort analyses that compare the using and meaning-giving practices of different age and socioeconomic groups, to reveal the influence of diverse group cultures on collective domestication.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

He Gong is now affiliated to Renmin University of China, China.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (grant no. 19BXW094).

ORCID iDs

Yuting He

Xiyuan Liu

He Gong

Author biographies

Yuting He is a graduate student at the School of Journalism and Communication at Xiamen University. Her research interest is the big-data approach to social media research, especially how marginalized groups use social media.

Xiyuan Liu is an Assistant Professor CTT of the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver and the Associate Program Chair of the International College Beijing program.

Hui Xiong is an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Xiamen University. Her current research focuses on the digital inclusion, with special attention to the technology use of old adults within various social contexts.

He Gong is an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Remin University of China. She focuses on public communication and crisis communication management research, especially in the context of social media.

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