From affordances to cultural affordances: An analytic framework for tracing the dynamic interaction among technology,people and culture

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel framework called ‘cultural affordances’ to examine the dynamic interplay among technology, users and culture, as multilevel and multidirectional interactive networks. The framework includes three dimensions. 1) Cultural affordances of technology describe what technology can offer users and culture in terms of behavioural or cultural changes. 2) Cultural affordances of users describe what users can offer other users, technology and culture in terms of behavioural, technological or cultural changes. 3) Affordances of the cultural describe what culture can offer users and technology in terms of the design and use of technology as well as related changes. To establish the need for a culturally oriented extension to affordance theory, we first revisit Gibson's original definition of affordances of the environment and discuss its significance and limitations, including the need to understand the interplay between technology and users in the digital era. We contend that culture, as an assemblage of all relations and practices, should be included as an indispensable part of affordance theory, and we provide a detailed explanation of the novel, three-dimensional framework of cultural affordances. We then apply the framework to three prior empirical studies and one ongoing study to demonstrate how the framework can be used as an analytic tool to deepen our understanding of the multilevel and multidirectional interplay among technology, users and culture, and we identify related changes, focusing on WeChat. We also discuss how the framework can provide directions for designing new technologies to improve collaborations among users, between users and designers, and between an online platform and the offline world.

Keywords

WeChat social media affordances cultural affordances cultural studies

1. Introduction

The notion of affordances has been widely used to understand and design for the interaction between technology and users (Bucher and Helmond, 2017; Davis and Chouinard, 2016; Gaver, 1992; Hartson, 2003; Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2012; Norman, 2013). American psychologist James Gibson first introduced the concept: ‘The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill’ (Gibson, 1986: 127). Later, scholars from various fields, such as design, human–computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, computer-mediated communication, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and social media studies, have conceptualized various kinds of affordances (Bareither and Bareither, 2019; boyd, 2010; Costa, 2018; Nagy and Neff, 2015). Some of these conceptualizations have demonstrated an inclination towards technological determinism (such as physical or technological affordances), some have shown a tendency towards social constructionism (such as social normative or imagined affordances), and others have endeavoured to integrate the technological and the social by stressing the context (such as affordances-in-practice or ad hoc affordances). Significantly, these studies have either excluded or downplayed the cultural aspect while developing affordance theory, and have sometimes limited agency to human actors and maintained a static view of culture. These limitations constrain us from comprehensively understanding the interplay between technology and users in the digital era.

To further develop the theory of affordances and improve its application in empirical research, it is essential to include the cultural aspect as an indispensable part. In the rest of this paper, we first examine the significance and limitations of Gibson's affordances of the environment and establish that this cultural aspect is excluded from his theory. Then, we briefly review the development of affordance theory in ICT and social media studies, identifying the remaining limitations in addressing culture. To overcome these limitations, we define culture as the sum of all relations and practices that are constantly changing and evolving in a particular sociohistorical context, and we offer a detailed explanation of our novel, three-dimensional framework of cultural affordances. We then demonstrate how this framework can be applied in empirical studies as an analytical tool to investigate the interplay among technology, users and culture; to identify the behavioural, technological and cultural changes that are derived from within that interplay; and to provide directions for designing new technologies that permit better collaborations among users, between users and designers, and between an online platform and the offline world. Finally, we conclude with an invitation for further empirical research on cultural affordances in related fields.

2. Revisiting Gibson's affordances of the environment

2.1 Significance

Gibson's notion of the affordances of the environment is significant in at least two ways. First, it aims to transcend subjective–objective dichotomous views by perceiving animals and their situated environments as complementary through possible relationships. Gibson (1986) contended that an absolute boundary between the objective and the subjective is a fallacious notion. Instead of examining separately the properties of objects and subjects, one should focus on affordances or the relational properties that emerge from the interaction between animals and their environments (Gibson, 1986; Heft, 1989). Second, the concept endeavours to free people from the bondage of second-hand or mediated knowledge, such as ‘images and writing’ or ‘past experiences and memory’, that could limit people's ways of thinking and doing (Gibson, 1986: 42, 254).

2.2 Limitations

Despite its significance, Gibson's notion of the affordances of the environment has limitations, as it excludes the agency of the environment and culture. Specifically, Gibson (1986: 135) contended that humans and animals can offer ‘the richest and most elaborate affordances of the environment’ to other humans and animals. However, he refrained from mentioning that humans and animals could offer something to the environment in return. That omission might have been due to his restricted view of the environment as stable and lacking agency—a view that is untenable in the age of digital environments. It is questionable to state that a technological platform (such as a social networking site) as a particular environment can offer affordances to users, whereas users cannot offer anything back. In contrast, Despret (2016) maintained that the natural environment has its own agency. Kaptelinin and Nardi (2006) extended the scope of agency from human actors to non-human entities (such as bears, fax machines, or the World Trade Organization). Neff et al. (2012: 301) argued that technology can make social changes and it has ‘technical agency’.

Second, Gibson's description of the affordances of the environment tended to prioritize the natural world and deprioritize the cultural world. For Gibson (1986), the ecological approach of perceiving the affordances of an object starts from the natural environment. This understanding fails when applied to an object designed and utilized in the cultural environment. For example, Heft (1989) stated that the affordances of an object are applicable in the human world and they are sociocultural in origin. Costall (1995) stated that the natural environment we confront nowadays is already humanized.

Third, Gibson (1986) suggested that affordances are derived from knowledge received first-hand (such as direct experience) rather than that attained second-hand (such as stories, images or texts). According to Gibson, the latter is less reliable since it can be factual or fictional. Nonetheless, this prioritization faces an immediate challenge, as the two knowledge types are not always separable. Moreover, second-hand knowledge not only facilitates but also affects how we experience first-hand knowledge (Miyamoto et al., 2006; Zheng and Yu, 2016).

Fourth, Gibson's explanation of the concept of invariance was incomplete. At the end of The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Gibson (1986: 310–311) attempted to describe what invariants are and offered examples, including invariants that underlie changes in the optic array and invariants for perceiving the surfaces, their relative layouts and reflectances, saying, ‘they are not yet known, but they almost certainly involve ratios of intensity and color among part of the array … The study of invariants is just beginning’. Nonetheless, no clear definition of invariants was given. Furthermore, Gibson (1986: 13) stated that permanence is relative: ‘the “permanent objects” of the world … are actually only objects that persist for a very long time’. If invariants are relatively persistent, then enduring cultural values and practices should also be considered invariants in the cultural environment, and they can be experienced through direct activities as well as through words and images.

To overcome these limitations, our understanding of environment and agency should be extended in at least four ways. First, the environment, including the natural and the cultural environment, is neither static nor nonresponsive. Instead, it has agency and can respond to what is offered. Second, having agency means having the capacity to act upon oneself regardless of the type of actors (such as human or technological actors). Third, it is problematic to understand environmental agency by simply replicating the ways we understand human agency. Fourth, agency is intrinsically related to culture. In this paper, we recognize the agency of both human and nonhuman actors (Latour, 2005). Such agencies have different characteristics, and they cannot be understood using the same standards (Rose et al., 2005). What users can offer to a technological platform is affected by specific cultural values and practices, and the realization of one's own agency is directed culturally (Campbell, 2009). The agency of nonhuman actors also has a cultural aspect since it involves designers’ values, and a platform can encourage or discourage specific behaviours.

3. Developing affordance theory: Divergence and convergence

The subsequent development of affordance theory in ICT and social media studies can be categorized into three approaches: platform-centered, user-centered and context-centered approaches. However, these approaches provide little explanation for the cultural dynamics at play in the interaction between technology and users. These dynamics may involve: 1) the cultural aspect that is embedded in a technological platform; 2) the differences in users' values, practices and sociocultural norms compared to the cultural values of the platform and its designers; and 3) the multidirectional and multilevel interplay among technology, users and culture.

3.1 Platform-centred affordances

Prior studies of affordances in ICTs and social media studies have demonstrated a tendency to centralize technological properties and focus on how they affect users and their related social interactions. For example, Gaver (1991) defined technological affordances as an object's independent, inherent and physical properties that are compatible with a user for possible action. Gaver excluded culture as an integral factor when developing affordances theory. boyd (2010) provided an insightful analysis of the structural affordances of networked technology for networked publics, including persistence, replicability, scalability and searchability. This understanding of affordances focuses on the properties of social network sites or a technological platform (boyd and Ellison, 2007; Marwick and boyd, 2014), treats affordances as universal, and does not highlight the unique design of a technological platform or what users can offer in return as a different type of affordance. Later, boyd (2013) acknowledged culture primarily as a contextual factor, documenting, for example, how individuals from distinct socioeconomic classes prefer different social-networking environments. This analysis can be expanded to include culture in the network of agency both as an acting agent and as offering affordances for other human and technological agents.

Technology has a cultural aspect, as it can request, demand, encourage, discourage, allow and refuse (Davis and Chouinard, 2016). Meanwhile, users do not use ICTs and social media only in various ways but also return affordances to affect the design of a technological platform. For example, the student backlash against Facebook's News Feed in 2006 forced the platform to modify the function to allow users to control their own privacy settings (Sanchez, 2009; Schmidt, 2006). Bareither and Bareither (2019: 15) proposed the notion of the emotional affordances of digital media as ‘its capacities to enable, prompt and restrict the enactment of particular emotional experiences unfolding in between the media technology and an actor's practical sense for its user’. Again, it is problematic to assume that digital media can provoke users’ emotional reactions unanimously, since users’ personalities and sociocultural contexts vary.

3.2 User/social-centred affordances

Some scholars have placed users’ needs at the centre of their discourse and stated that the affordances of a group of people can encourage specific ways of using ICTs while discouraging others. Nonetheless, that perspective falls short of discussing how users’ needs are affected by the cultural environment in which they live. To elaborate, Dinsmore (2019) introduced the concept of contested affordances, describing how smartphone affordances become embedded in power relationships between teachers and students to show that social relationships shape technological affordances. In this research, technological affordances have been contested with the affordances of social norms, and, sometimes, the latter constrain the former. Dinsmore's study is inspiring since it described affordances in a multidirectional manner. However, it failed to discuss the cultural aspect of smartphones or the cultural values and practices of students and teachers. Similarly, McVeigh-Schultz and Baym (2015) proposed the notion of vernacular affordances, arguing that users can invent new practices and rules unanticipated by designers. Nonetheless, the culture that affects users’ practices remains undiscussed. Lo Presti (2020) noted that people's offerings to each other with or without technology are socionormative affordances.

These approaches concentrate on how users and social norms affect ways of using technologies in particular contexts. Nonetheless, these understandings overlook the role of culture in terms of the use and design of a technological platform.

3.3 Context-centred affordances: Integrating the technological and the social

Several scholars have developed versions of affordance theory to integrate technological features and social aspects by focusing on contexts and practices. For example, Van Osch and Mendelson (2011) suggested a typology of affordances to uncover the complex interactions among developers, users and an artefact. In their typology, designed affordances are perceived and recognized by designers, improvised affordances are recognized and improvised upon by users, and emergent affordances are neither perceived by designers nor recognized by users but can still influence the interactions between artefacts and actors. Arguably, designers and users are not always situated in the same culture, leading to different understandings of an artefact. Similarly, Costa (2018: 3651) proposed the notion of affordances-in-practice as ‘the enactment of platform properties by specific users within social and cultural contexts’. Additionally, Costa (2018) claimed that structural affordances (boyd, 2010) and the phenomenon of context collapse (Marwick and boyd, 2011) are not found in some non-Western contexts. These two notions disapprove of the prevailing understanding of affordances as stable and invariant as well as the dominant, platform-centred approach. Instead, the notions include sociocultural aspects as part of the concept of affordances and recognize the agency of human actors. However, it is problematic to understand culture as conventional and stable.

In summary, a unidimensional or unidirectional approach of understanding affordances is insufficient as technology and culture continue to evolve, and access to computers, the internet and mobile phones increases. Meanwhile, it is unsatisfactory to simply involve all technological, social and cultural aspects in the theory of affordances. There is a lack of an analytical tool that allows researchers, practitioners and designers to understand how technology affects people and culture, how culture affects the use and design of technological platforms, and how users’ ways of perceiving and using technologies affect their design and the culture within which they are designed and used.

4. Cultural affordances revisited

4.1 Prior studies

Scholars from design, human–computer interaction and communication studies have introduced the notion of cultural affordances on their own terms. For example, Turner and Turner (2002) stated that the notion of cultural affordances is a set of unique attributes developed from a group's daily practices, and users perceive cultural affordances based on objectified and historically developed meanings and values. Costall (2012) argued that affordances in general differ from canonical affordances, which are the particular, normative meanings of an object. For example, the canonical affordance of a chair is that it is for sitting, yet people can use a chair in multiple ways (Costall and Richards, 2013; Cranz, 2000). Similarly, Solymosi (2013: 594) described cultural affordances as ‘symbols, words, [and] images’. These notions of cultural affordances are inspirational but insufficient because they tend towards cultural constructionism and apply a restricted view of culture as stabilized and representational. In addition, these perceptions imply a culture–technology dichotomy. Hence, the discussion about the interaction among technology, users and culture remains incomplete.

4.2 Cultural studies perspective: A novel approach

Despite the absence of a settled definition, culture is widely understood in the field of cultural studies as an assemblage of all relations and practices that are constantly changing and evolving (Barker and Jane, 2016; Hall, 1980, 1986; Slack and Wise, 2002; Williams, 2011; Willis and Willis, 1981). Williams (2011: 93) contended that culture is ‘ordinary’ and a ‘whole way of life’. Hall (1980, 1986) described culture as the sum of all conventional and unconventional social practices and their interrelations that are grounded in a particular sociohistorical context. Slack and Wise (2005: 126) proposed that ‘culture is a complex set of connections or relations’. This definition is similar to actor–network theory's contention that the social is ‘a type of connection between things’ (Latour, 2005: 5). Scholars from cultural studies understand culture as having the characteristics of inclusiveness, ordinariness, contingency, network, relation, practice and process.

Rather than perceiving technology as an objective and independent entity, cultural studies researchers see technology as ‘a relationship’ and ‘a connection’ (Williams, 1981: 227), ‘forms of life’ (Winner, 2010: 3), ‘an assemblage’ (Wise, 1997: 137), ‘a cultural form’ (Williams, 2003: 86), and ‘an articulation’; that is, technology is a form of connecting different elements as a whole (Slack and Wise, 2002: 488). These descriptions show that the nature of technology is about relation, connection and process, and they remind us of Kling's (2000: 247) claim in a distinct body of literature that information technologies are ‘socio-technical networks’. Thus, the relationship between culture and technology is convergent rather than divergent. Technology is ‘integral to culture’ and ‘integrally connected to the context within which it emerges, is developed and used’ (Slack and Wise, 2005: 5, 26). Moreover, technology has a cultural aspect as it can request, demand, encourage, discourage, allow and refuse (Davis and Chouinard, 2016). Thus, cultural studies provide a novel perspective to study affordances. The field overcomes the culture–technology binary view and integrates the two.

Having clarified our understanding of culture, technology and their relationship, we offer a novel framework of cultural affordances that aims to integrate the cultural and the technological.

4.3 A novel framework of cultural affordances

To develop the theory of affordances further, we propose a novel framework of cultural affordances that enables us to investigate the interaction among technology, users and culture from multiple perspectives at multiple levels. The framework includes three dimensions.

Cultural affordances of technology describe what technology as a particular environment can offer to users and culture, and such affordances may or may not affect users’ ways of thinking and doing as well as culture. For example, a technological platform can encourage, strengthen, discourage or refuse certain behaviours or cultures. Cultural affordances of technology recognize the agency of users and culture in engaging in these possibilities.

Cultural affordances of users describe what users as a particular environment can offer to other users, technology and culture. Such offerings may or may not affect other users’ ways of doing and thinking, technological platform designs, or culture. Cultural affordances of users acknowledge the agency of other users, technology and culture in choosing how to respond to users’ actions. For example, posting, liking or commenting on a social networking site offers affordances to other users, technology or culture. Users’ actions do not have to be significant. Even the simplest actions, such as clicking, can be aggregated and re-presented by technology to offer potential actions to other users. Such actions reveal users’ personal values that are either in line with cultural norms or not and can affect cultural and technological changes. When these aggregations and re-presentations form a cycle, it increases the chance of community formation and value formation within the community (Joseph et al., 2007). Thus, cultural affordances of users can be utilized to examine the process of emerging and forming communities, contextual meanings, or new norms.

Affordances of the cultural describe what culture as a particular environment can offer to users and technological platforms, and such offerings may or may not affect the ways technologies are designed and used. Affordances of the cultural recognize the agency of technology and users in responding to culture. They explore the invisible and ambient culture. Like a fish starting to notice that it lives in water, they pay attention to what and how collective ways of doing and thinking that we take for granted can affect our ways of using and designing technologies. Such affordances also reveal the unnoticed and the subconsciousness or unconsciousness and identify looming norms and the unknown.

This framework aims to investigate the kinds of affordances that are offered by technology, users and culture and to identify the behavioural, cultural and technological changes derived from their interplay. The cultural affordances of technology examine how technology can affect users’ ways of doing and thinking as well as their culture. The cultural affordances of users investigate how users can affect other users, technology and culture. The affordances of the cultural explore how culture can affect the use and design of a technological form. This framework enables us to examine further the power dynamics of an interactive network that involves various actors, including human and nonhuman actors. The agencies associated with the different types of cultural affordances can be divided into three kinds: those associated with technology, with users, and with culture. The three types of agencies are related but not symmetrical or determinate. Trying to use the same standard to understand each of them would be unsatisfactory and implausible.

This new framework of cultural affordances is assembling and revealing. It avoids either cultural or technological hegemony. There is never one overarching cultural affordance: it is always plural and open to integrating more dimensions (such as cultural affordances of designers). The three dimensions can be contradictory and sometimes competing. The framework aims to bridge technology and culture, online and offline worlds, and users and platforms as well as to reveal the limitations of technology and culture.

The following discussion uses three prior empirical studies and one ongoing study as examples to demonstrate why investigating the interplay among technology, users and culture from one direction or at one level is insufficient. The results show why we need this novel framework of cultural affordances to examine the complex and dynamic interplay of the three at different levels as well as from multiple directions simultaneously. We also demonstrate how this novel framework can identify behavioural, cultural and technological changes and provide directions for designing new technologies.

5. Applying the framework of cultural affordances

To illustrate our theory, we apply the framework of cultural affordances to three empirical studies and an ongoing study of WeChat as a digital technology having rich relationships with its users and Chinese culture. The focus on WeChat addresses the lack of research on social media affordances in non-Western contexts (Costa, 2018). The three prior empirical studies were chosen purposefully since they each examined the interplay of WeChat, users and Chinese culture from the perspective of either a technological platform, its users, or a culture. Taken alone, each perspective is insufficient to demonstrate the complex and dynamic interplay among the three. By applying the framework to the three prior studies and comparing them with an ongoing study, we demonstrate how those studies can be further developed to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the interplay among WeChat, users and Chinese culture; identify behavioural, cultural and technological changes that are derived from the process; and provide directions for designing new technologies.

5.1 Cultural affordances of technology

Holmes et al. (2015) examined WeChat as a case study during the 2014 Chinese Lunar New Year and argued that WeChat supports traditional Chinese values. Specifically, major attributes of Chinese culture, such as filial piety, social connections (guanxi), reciprocal favours (renqing) and face (mianzi), are demonstrated and practised on WeChat through digital red packets (Holmes et al., 2015). Traditionally, during the Chinese Lunar New Year, elders put money in red packets, give them to children and unmarried family members, and wish the recipients another healthy and safe year (Wirth, 2017). In contemporary China, people have extended this ritual gifting practice to other special occasions, such as weddings, birthdays, household moves and anniversaries (Mack, 2019). WeChat launched digital red packets immediately before the 2014 Chinese Lunar New Year. The feature attracted more than 8 million users, and the payments made totalled approximately 400 million yuan (85 million US dollars) via 40 million messages within nine days (Holmes et al., 2015). Consequently, millions of new users signed up for WeChat and voluntarily subscribed to the WeChat payment system by linking it with their bank accounts (Yin, 2015; Xu, 2021).

Holmes et al.'s study can be further developed by applying our proposed framework of cultural affordances. Indeed, WeChat's digital red packets enable users to practise the cultural tradition of giving red packets more easily in the absence of spatiotemporal constraints (Xu, 2021). The digital feature reveals a cultural aspect of the design and is a cultural affordance of WeChat. However, digital red packets have their own cultural values and practices embedded in the platform. The packets have a maximum amount of 200 yuan (approximately 29.85 US dollars) (Custer, 2016). In the offline world, the amount of money in a red packet depends on the relationship between the giver and the receiver, and it generally varies from 150–2000 yuan (20–300 US dollars) (Wirth, 2017). When explaining the reason for setting this limitation, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong said that people should not use this feature to compete with others or to show off their wealth on WeChat:¹

We have noticed that giving red packets is increasingly becoming a purely monetary transaction. It's just sending out money without any emotional attachment. The larger amount you send, the more love you have. This is not right. How can money measure the world? (Tencent, 2019)

This statement demonstrates how digital red packets have their own cultural value. The maximum amount of money in a digital red packet is the same for everyone, regardless of whether they are rich or poor. It is fair to everyone, and WeChat leaves no space for privilege.

Additionally, the digital red packets come in two types. One can either send a digital red packet to another individual or designate an amount of money to give to a group of people (Liu et al., 2015; Xu, 2021). The former bears a resemblance to the traditional practice, but the latter is a gamified version of red packets. A sender first sets how many people can receive the packet within a WeChat group. The potential receivers are then expected to grab or open the packet as soon as possible, and the amount of money that one can receive is randomly assigned, as in a lucky draw (Liu et al., 2015; Xu, 2021). This feature offers users a new way of giving red packets, and it enables participants to not always follow the established, unspoken rules in terms of who shall give to whom, when to give, and how much to give in a red packet (Wu and Ma, 2017). Thus, the cultural value of the digital red packets may not always be in line with the established social hierarchy.

To answer the question about whether WeChat supports Chinese traditional values, one cannot ignore the users’ role. Traditionally, red envelopes are given only on special occasions, such as Chinese Lunar New Year, weddings, or birthdays (Wirth, 2017). In contrast, WeChat users give digital red packets more frequently and have extended this practice to new scenarios (Wu and Ma, 2017; Xu, 2021). For example, digital red packets can be given to start a conversation in a quiet WeChat group, reconcile conflicts among group members, remind colleagues to check and respond to work-related messages, ask for a favour from an acquaintance, pay a talented writer for online content as a digital reward (dashang), split a bill between friends, or express love and care to family members and partners on special days, such as Mother's Day and Chinese Valentine's Day (Xu, 2021; Weng et al., 2020; Wu and Ma, 2017). Consequently, the original cultural meaning of exchanging red packets between family and friends has become blurred through the monetized connectivity of all kinds of relationships. Overall, relationships (guanxi) have become quantifiable, impersonal, more short term, and even disposable with an obligatory expectation of immediate reciprocity (Xu, 2021). Users feel social pressure and competition after seeing others frequently give or ask for digital red packets within a WeChat group (Wu and Ma, 2017). Thus, guanxi culture has not been strengthened on WeChat since what users offer to other users does not improve their relationship with others in the long term; nor does it deepen their mutual understanding and emotional connection.

Since 2016, WeChat has increased the upper limit for each digital red packet to 520 yuan (75.6 US dollars) for 24 h on some special days, such as 20 May, Valentine's Day, and Chinese Valentine's day (Qixi).² These days are ‘considered fit by young people for saying “I love you”’ (Xinhua, 2017; Shen et al., 2020). In Chinese, ‘520’ and ‘I love you’ are homophonic, and lovers tend to give red packets with an amount of 520 yuan to express their love and later post screenshots of either receiving or giving this special kind of red packet (Weng et al., 2020; Xinhua, 2017). WeChat may have modified the feature temporarily to respond to the needs of younger users or the cultural affordances of users, allowing them to use digital red packets to express their love at a particular moment. Hence, it is incomplete to conclude that the platform alone either strengthens or destabilizes traditional Chinese culture. Meanwhile, the upper limit for a digital red packet changes back to 200 yuan the next day. This example reveals the agency of the platform/designers as well as their cultural values.

To deepen our understanding of why certain cultural affordances of users and WeChat are offered rather than others, we need to examine what the cultural offers users and the platform. Instead of stating that WeChat supports traditional Chinese values, Xu (2021) stated that being polite and sending blessings through a red packet are some of the reasons for the popularity of WeChat among Chinese users. That is, traditional Chinese cultural values and practices enable WeChat to be adopted more quickly and easily because the platform offers values and practices that resemble the traditional ones. Additionally, Chinese cultural practices and values would affect users’ practices on WeChat. For example, in some WeChat groups, only supervisors, rather than the team members, give out digital red packets to boost the team's morale; people of equal positions normally give each other similar amounts of money when exchanging digital red packets (Xu, 2021). Therefore, people still follow certain hierarchical orders when using the digital red packets. A prior study showed that users feel competitive pressure when giving digital red packets since people can ‘see who sends or receive Red Packets with the highest monetary value’ (Wu and Ma, 2017: 2245). Such pressure can be caused by the culture of face and reciprocity (Wu and Ma, 2017). Hence, what the cultural offers can play an essential role in terms of the design and use of WeChat, as well as what WeChat offers and what Chinese users offer in return. Examining either the platform or users alone leaves us with an incomplete understanding of these behaviours and their mechanisms.

Certain behavioural, technological and cultural changes are derived from the interplay among WeChat, users and Chinese culture. Furthermore, the interplay among the three is multidirectional at different levels, including direct and indirect interactions. The interplay can be competitive and even contradictory. For example, the affordances of digital red packets allow users to practise the cultural ritual more conveniently, while the original cultural meaning of giving a red packet as a blessing has been altered to a combination of expressing love and care to loved ones and achieving instrumental goals (Wu and Ma, 2017; Xu, 2021). This change may guide society to become more goal-driven and monetized.

On the one hand, users quickly adopted the new technology and became more comfortable using digital red packets to manage various relationships in their own social networks (Xu, 2021). On the other hand, users still had to follow certain hierarchical orders when giving or receiving digital red packets. What users offer to other users can both strengthen and dissolve the traditional culture. WeChat modified the digital red packets to enable younger users to express love by sending more money (Xinhua, 2017). This change allowed users to strengthen relationships with their loved ones, but users might feel that intimate relationships can now be replaced with monetary value. These tensions or contradictions can be used for further direction when designing the platform. For example, the WeChat design team can ask what can be done so users can enjoy the technology's convenience and express their love and care by giving digital red packets without feeling competitive pressure. One possible solution could be giving the users control over the decision to show the amount of money they receive.

The interplay among WeChat, users and Chinese culture resulted in the following changes: 1) from giving red packets to relatives and friends only on special occasions to giving digital red packets more frequently to people in various relationships; 2) from expressing love and care to achieving an instrumental goal; and 3) from setting 200 yuan as the maximum amount for each digital red packet to setting a maximum of 520 yuan on some special days. An examination of these changes from the single perspective of WeChat, its users, or the Chinese culture alone is insufficient.

5.2 Cultural affordances of users

After conducting a qualitative study with 30 participants, Zhou et al. (2017) concluded that younger WeChat users innovatively use culturally relevant emojis and stickers to modify meanings and express their own identities and feelings. A new subculture has emerged on WeChat in which users use seemingly consenting emojis or stickers (such as a smiling face) to express dissent. For example, younger WeChat users replace the traditional meaning of a smiling face with new connotations such as being speechless with scorn, having a mocking attitude, or expressing the idea that ‘I don’t want to talk to you’ (Zhou et al., 2017: 752). Meanwhile, users create their own stickers based on the new connotations of a smiling face (Zhou et al., 2017). These practices enable younger users to share a sense of closeness with other users who understand the new connotations, emerging as a cultural affordance of users: what users offer cultivates new cultural meanings and practices on WeChat.

We can apply the framework of cultural affordances to develop Zhou et al.'s study further. As early as 2012, WeChat included emojis and stickers on its platform, and, as early as 2014, it offered users the ability to create customized stickers by using personalized images with a simple tab, making it one of the first companies to offer such features (De Seta, 2016; 2018). These new functions led to an explosion of users’ creating personalized stickers on the platform (De Seta, 2016). Importantly, this feature reveals its own cultural value, which is to support personalized expression in a non-traditional way. In June 2021, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong mentioned that the emojis and stickers on WeChat were mainly provided by users:

WeChat has not updated its biaoqing/facial expressions (e.g., memes, stickers and emojis) repertoire for a couple of years. Thanks to our users, we can have the latest biaoqing circulated on our platform … based on a small sample of users’ data, I found that users tend to express their feelings in a more extreme manner recently, such as using the smiley-face-split-in-half emoji more often. (Zaobizagang, 2021)

In parallel with the WeChat founder's comments, WeChat launched version 8.0, in which a new feature enables users to update their personal status on their profile page by using 21 new emojis (such as happy, broken, zoning out, luck come to me, etc.), one of which was the animated emoji of a smiley-face-split-into-half, which was added in January 2021 (Dao Insights, 2021). Thus, the emoji culture that has emerged on WeChat is a combination of what the platform offers users as well as what users offer other users and the platform.

The affordance of the cultural should be considered in this case since an important question is why users alter the meaning of a smiling face rather than simply using an angry face emoji. One possible explanation is that the behaviour is culturally related. People are expected to be polite and respectful to others and those in positions of authority, such as teachers and supervisors (Liu, 2004; Yau, 1988). Thus, one needs to take special care when expressing disagreement (Liu, 2004). This cultural norm still affects users’ communication modes on WeChat, especially when they engage with senior users. In parallel with this cultural norm, prior reports have found that older WeChat users still used the smiling emoji with its original meaning, and younger users were not concerned with whether older users, such as their senior family members, understood the emoji's newer meaning (Borak, 2019; Zhou et al., 2017). Thus, this emerging emoji culture on WeChat should be examined by including all three dimensions of cultural affordances to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon and related changes.

5.3 Affordances of the cultural

Chen (2018) conducted a qualitative study by interviewing 42 college students studying in China and concluded that traditional Chinese cultural concepts, such as filial piety, social ties (guanxi) and face (mianzi), still affect how young Chinese students use WeChat. ‘They could be seen to carry out filial piety by creating virtual co-presence with their parents on WeChat … they remained aware of the necessity to present themselves in the online environment according to their parents’ expectations’ (Chen, 2018: 254). This research demonstrates what traditional Chinese culture offers Chinese college students and how it affects their ways of using WeChat.

Similarly, Chen's study can be further developed by applying the framework of cultural affordances to deepen our understanding of the interplay among WeChat, college students and Chinese culture. WeChat is built on users’ acquaintance networks and can reveal users’ actual relationships in real life (Chen et al., 2019; Wang and Gu, 2016). Hence, the followers of a Chinese college student on WeChat are people whom he/she knows in real life, such as his/her parents, teachers and classmates. This reveals the platform's cultural value, which is to encourage certain practices that are acceptable in an acquaintance's social network in comparison to other practices that are acceptable in a stranger's social network. Additionally, the platform requires users to link a bank account with a verified real name if they want to use WeChat for any financial services, such as giving red packets, ordering a taxi or purchasing a train ticket (Xu, 2021). This design feature reveals another cultural value of WeChat: prioritizing trust and reducing uncertainty among users. Thus, WeChat's cultural affordances play an essential role in terms of Chinese college students’ ways of using it.

What users offer other users on WeChat, such as comments on a post, direct messages or likes, affects Chinese college students’ practice on WeChat as well. Some college students expressed that they needed to learn how to communicate with others on WeChat:

How people communicate with each other on WeChat is different from how we communicate on QQ. In the teacher–student WeChat group, I usually let others respond to messages first, and I will do what others do, like saying ‘thank you’ or sending a flower emoji to my teacher.³

Other students expressed that they changed their ways of using WeChat after receiving text messages from friends or parents. For example, a student mentioned that he/she received some comments from friends, complaining that he/she posted too often and too negatively:

Whenever I want to post something, I think of those comments from my friends. They have a reason: I shall consider the feelings of others who will read my post rather than just posting something for myself. Sometimes, I decide not to post what I want to say on WeChat after giving a second thought or post it on QQ if I really need an outlet.³

Other college students expressed that their parents reminded them to study harder after seeing what they post on WeChat:

I posted some pictures when traveling with my friends, and the next day, my mom texted me on WeChat, telling me that I come to college to study rather than just for fun. I did not think about blocking her before and now I always hide the posts from my parents if I post something that can be worrisome for them.³

Thus, not only Chinese cultural values but also the cultural affordances of WeChat and the cultural affordances of users influence college students’ ways of using WeChat. Examining the three dimensions of cultural affordances together might improve our understanding of users’ behavioural and cultural changes on WeChat. Specifically, many users who want to post something personal, such as feelings and opinions, return either to QQ (an instant messaging software service for younger users in China) or to other platforms, such as Sina Weibo (a Chinese microblogging website). Thus, WeChat's culture becomes more professional and formal. Equally importantly, examining these dimensions offers us some direction for designing new technologies. For example, designers must find solutions to mitigate, if not resolve, the tension between the need to obtain trust and convenience and the need to express oneself without too much pressure.

6. Conclusion

Understanding the use and design of ICTs and social media requires an analytical tool that examines technology, culture and users as multiple interactive networks with intertwined relationships and multiple directions. As technology and its application continue to evolve and as access to computers, the internet and mobile phones increases, researchers, practitioners and designers must understand simultaneously and holistically how technological platforms affect people and culture, how culture affects the use and design of technological platforms, and how users’ ways of perceiving and using technologies affect their design and the culture.

This paper provides a novel framework of cultural affordances as an analytical tool that can support such inquiries with a focus on relationships and networks as a whole rather than on them as single dimensions. Cultural affordances of technology refer to what technology (such as ICTs and social media) can offer users and culture, leading us to examine how technology can affect users’ ways of thinking and doing as well as culture. Cultural affordances of users refer to what users can offer, enabling us to investigate how users’ behaviours can affect other users, technological designs and culture. Affordances of the cultural refer to what cultural values and practices can offer, allowing us to explore how culture can influence technologies’ design and ways of using them. An additional contribution of the theory is to acknowledge the agencies of technology, users and culture in responding to the affordances of the other two. Several empirical cases exemplify how this novel framework can be applied to deepen our understanding of the interplay among technology, users and culture; to identify behavioural, technological and cultural changes during such interactive processes; and to provide directions for designing new technologies. This paper also demonstrates the insufficiency of examining only one dimension of the interplay among technology, users and culture. Instead, multiple dimensions must be investigated simultaneously.

The three dimensions of cultural affordances function interdependently, and they proceed simultaneously and continuously. This framework offers us an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the uncertainty and spontaneity of the interactions among technology, users and culture and each's agencies. We hope this paper can be considered an invitation for further empirical research on cultural affordances in ICTs, social media studies and other related fields.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the extremely helpful anonymous reviewers for their insights and comments.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Daniel D Suthers

Notes

Author biographies

Yinan Sun is a doctoral student in the Communication and Information Sciences (CIS) PhD program at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Her research interests include cultural and social informatics, human–computer interaction, network science, and science and technology studies.

Daniel D Suthers is a professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. He is also the Graduate Program Chair of the Department of Information and Computer Sciences, and the Chair of the CIS PhD program. His research interests include computer-supported collaborative learning, technology enhanced learning, learning analytics, social informatics and network science.

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