App economy, Android App Store, and Migrant Workers in Urban China

This talk is derived from a participant observation of migrant workers’ mobile phone usage in the city of Shanghai, China in 2014. I learned from my fieldwork that the shift of the access to the Internet from a desktop end, and for many, from a non-smartphone to a smartphone end was a process requiring learning, and a wide array of institutions have enabled this learning. The talk describes the social and technological conditions that ease workers’ mobile experience by focusing on the Android app store. It views app store more than an app distribution network, but a cultural form, a techno-economic institution, and an information gateway defining migrant workers’ mobile phone usage.

 Bio: Nina Li (Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) is a lecturer in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Her research focuses on digital culture, global media and cultural industries, media history and political economy, television studies, etc. Her work has appeared in Media, Culture & Society and International Journal of Cultural Studies.

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Following the lecture, please join us for drinks at St Lucy's.