Returning to and continuing the traditional Chinese family system via WeChat: Digitally mediated families in liquid China

Abstract

This article rethinks digitally mediated family, contending that WeChat facilitates the integration of digitally mediated Chinese family units and family practices into an entire system within traditional patterns. WeChat can serve as the hub for this kind of family mediation, since it is the dominant mega-platform in the smartphone-based Chinese polymedia environment, possessing superior technological convergence and sociocultural affordances. Based on qualitative data from 48 Chinese internal migrants, this article characterizes the entire system of the traditional Chinese family mediated by WeChat. First, the static Chinese family units converged on WeChat inherit spatial and hierarchical structures from the traditional models. Second, individuals’ WeChat usage for dynamic family practices is guided by Chinese family ethics, particularly those related to intergenerational and gendered ethics. Lastly, intimacy practices within Chinese families are digitally mediated to maintain ethically guided features in the Chinese style. This article emphasizes the role of polymedia-mediated ambient co-presence in activating implicit Chinese-style intimacy practices in the digital family spheres. Overall, when Chinese people log in to WeChat, they experience a return to traditional Chinese families, playing roles that contribute to the continuity of the entire traditional Chinese family system. This article suggests that the digitally mediated traditional family system ensures family stability in a highly modernized society where population mobility has become normalized.

Introduction

The increasing mobility of populations has given rise to separated kinship networks, transforming traditional families globally. This shift has prompted studies on how today's convergent digital media environment, termed polymedia, fosters connectedness among migrant families (Alinejad, 2019; Baldassar, 2016; Cabalquinto, 2018; Hsu, 2021; Madianou, 2016; Madianou & Miller, 2012; Waruwu, 2022, 2023). These studies were conducted based on an understanding of family as a dynamic process constructed by intimate interactions among its members (Finch, 2007; Morgan, 2011), rather than viewing it as a static unit—a “thing” comprising family members residing together (Weigel, 2008).

This study argues that scholars have not thoroughly examined digitally mediated family as a unified system encompassing both static units and dynamic practices. Furthermore, limited knowledge exists about the mediation of traditional family units and ethics practices within a localized polymedia environment. This study suggests further that a polymedia environment, grounded in local sociocultural settings, facilitates mediating the unified system of the local traditional family, comprehensively involving traditional family units and practices. Such mediation can contribute to the stability and continuity of the family system in a liquid modern society marked by significant internal population mobility. Therefore, this qualitative study investigates the digitally mediated traditional Chinese family system within the Chinese polymedia environment in today's liquid China.

Due to the inaccessibility of major overseas applications in Mainland China, the everyday lives of Chinese people are predominantly confined to an isolated polymedia environment rooted in the Chinese sociocultural context (Xiong & Liu, 2023). This Chinese polymedia environment has predominantly revolved around smartphones, hosting numerous applications that facilitate constant connectivity. Within this environment, WeChat serves as the central coordinator, leveraging internal and external technologies, aligning with sociocultural norms, and catering to the highly mobile lifestyles of the Chinese population (Chen et al., 2018; Ou & Lin, 2023; Xiong & Liu, 2023). Regarding social networking features, WeChat is designed for Chinese individuals to connect with acquaintances, and it has evolved into a specific hub for connecting with family members and units (Chen et al., 2018; Fang & Gong, 2020; Ou & Lin, 2023).

Based on the provided background, this study explicitly contends that WeChat simultaneously mediates the static units and dynamic ethics practices of Chinese families, which are often geographically separated. This platform digitally constitutes the entire traditional Chinese family system, enabling its stability and continuity.

The traditional Chinese family system is structured by four models of units: the nuclear family, extended family, small lineage, and lineage; the homeplace influences the manifestation of these different models, serving as the crucial domains for family activities (Fei, 1962; Tsui, 1989). Within these activities, Chinese individuals fulfill their roles, duties, and relationships based on a set of collectivist patriarchal family ethics, values, and etiquettes, which vary across generations and genders, ensuring harmony within kinship and facilitating the continuity of Chinese families (Chen, 2019; Fei, 1992; Hsu, 2021; Zhang, 2018). This study highlights that intimacy practice, which tends to be approached indirectly in Chinese families, is also a form of ethical behavior (Dion & Dion, 1993).

After conducting a literature review on static and dynamic families, Chinese family, and Chinese family ethics, this article introduces discussions on digitally mediated families and the polymedia theories stemming from migrant family studies. The article also identifies the localized features of the Chinese polymedia environment, with a particular focus on its coordinator, WeChat. After describing the applied qualitative methodology, the findings are presented through three themes that emerged from thematic analysis. The first theme depicts the digitized static traditional Chinese family units on WeChat. The second theme identifies intergenerational and gendered ethics practices within Chinese families on WeChat. The last theme characterizes digitally mediated ethically guided intimacy practices within Chinese families.

Literature review

Static and dynamic family, Chinese family, and Chinese family ethics

Family is defined as both a static unit and a dynamic process; family relationships are existed and enhanced through “doing” and “displaying” family rather than just “being” a family (Finch, 2007, 2011). A static “thing” family comprises family members who cohabit in a shared homeplace (Weigel, 2008). Displaying family provides evidence of the existence of a static family, which can be achieved through the visual and textual representation of various aspects, including the family's homeplace, surname, and the mutual acknowledgments of familial roles, relationships, and duties among family members (Cabalquinto, 2020; Finch, 2011; Waruwu, 2023).

Dynamic doing family represents a constructed quality of everyday interactions within family members, resulting in the creation of experiences related to places, relationships, and events that define family; intimacy practice is important for doing family (Finch, 2007; Morgan, 2011). For instance, when a mother feeds her child at a restaurant, her caregiving actions shape the perception that they are integral to the same family. Furthermore, the actions also symbolically display the mother's parental role and responsibilities, allowing not only the mother and child but also other family members and strangers in the restaurant to recognize and affirm their mother–child relationship and love. In other words, the practices of doing family and displaying family are intertwined, involving both internal family members and external observers; these elements together serve to solidify familial roles, responsibilities, and values (Cabalquinto, 2018; Finch, 2007, 2011; Henze-Pedersen & Järvinen, 2021).

When family practices are exposed to external and influential audiences, certain actions may be decorated to gain social acceptance (Henze-Pedersen & Järvinen, 2021). Henze-Pedersen and Järvinen (2021) further emphasize that family practices should be linked to a specific cultural and moral idea about family and family identities. Therefore, this study aims to rethink the features of static and dynamic family within the unique Chinese technological and cultural context.

The traditional Chinese family system comprises four models of static family units: the nuclear family, extended family, small lineage, and lineage (Fei, 1962, 1992). The nuclear family consists of parents and their unmarried child(ren), while the extended family comprises more than one nuclear family across two or more generations (Fei, 1962, 1992; Tsui, 1989). The small lineage incorporates an individual's nuclear and extended family, along with some distant relatives, representing the typical Chinese family unit (Fei, 1992). The lineage is composed of small lineage units, representing the highest-level Chinese family unit (Li, 2019; Zhang, 2018).

The homeplace influences the formation of various Chinese family units. In traditional society, members of extended families and/or small lineages typically resided together in shared physical spaces (Fei, 1962, 1992; Tsui, 1989). When adult children from nuclear families marry or conflicts arise within large-size family units, family members may explicitly divide homesteads, farms, and other properties into smaller family units. This Fenjia (Household division) process leads to the development of multigenerational extended families (Fei, 1962). The lineage temple is the primary homeplace for collective family events, such as weddings, funerals, and trials, which contribute to displaying the roles, duties, and relationships within the lineage; lineage members should maintain the lineage temple in their village, and both the village and the lineage temple are often named after the lineage ancestor's surname (Li, 2019; Zhang, 2018).

A lineage committee, comprising senior family leaders from small lineages, primarily male elders, holds authority over lineage affairs, establishes rules, and makes decisions for both the entire lineage and its members, ensuring harmony within the lineage and among different families (Zhang, 2018). This is because harmony is a key belief for Chinese families, exemplified by the idiom Jiahewanshixing (All things flourish in a harmonious family) (Chen, 2019).

The multilayered Chinese family units create a complicated Chinese kinship system that is dynamically sustained by practicing Chinese family ethics (Chen, 2019; Fei, 1992). These ethics strongly emphasize collectivism, suggesting that a family prioritizes cohesive values and interests over individual ones (Fang & Gong, 2020). The patriarchal power structure within Chinese kinships compels Chinese individuals to strictly adhere to Chinese family ethics—a set of patriarchal norms, duties, values, and etiquettes that vary according to generational positions and genders; this adherence also contributes to the harmony and solidarity within Chinese kinships and the continuity of Chinese families (Chen, 2019; Fang & Gong, 2020; Fei, 1962; Zhang, 2018; Zhao, 2022).

Parents should make substantial sacrifices for their children, especially their sons; Chinese adults should practice filial piety by caring for their parents and obeying their elders’ commands; among peer relatives, authority is given to the older ones; males have the privilege of inheriting family assets; the father or the eldest son assumes the family head role, shouldering responsibilities for the family's material needs; a married woman becomes a part of her husband's family, detaching from her original family's assets and affairs; females often assume caregiving roles in Chinese families (Fei, 1962; Hsu, 2021; Zhang, 2018; Zhao, 2022).

Overall, unlike Western families that prioritize affective intimacy practices in doing family, Chinese families tend to embrace more ethics practices. Furthermore, Chinese family ethics encourage avoiding overt displays of affection. For instance, spouses should maintain emotional distance in both private and public spheres (Fei, 1992). It is inaccurate to assert that intimacy is entirely absent in Chinese families. Chinese-style intimacy is expressed implicitly, reflecting collectivistic ethical values. This contrasts with Western intimacy values, which encourage more individualistic emotional involvement (Dion & Dion, 1993). Thus, this study highlights that Chinese-style intimacy practices possess an ethical nature.

Digitally mediated family and polymedia-mediated migrant families

Rich studies have affirmed that digital media facilitates family communication and kinship maintenance, acting as a key enabler for doing and displaying family to enhance family connectedness, particularly in mobile situations (Alinejad, 2019; Baldassar, 2016; Cabalquinto, 2018, 2020; Hsu, 2021; Madianou, 2016; Madianou & Miller, 2012; Tariq et al., 2022; Waruwu, 2022, 2023). They investigated the intertwined methods and impacts regarding digitally mediated practices for displaying and doing specific intimate kinships, familial roles, and caregiving activities. However, there is a dearth of evidence concerning digitally mediated family as an entire system simultaneously involving static family units and dynamic family practices. Additionally, scant knowledge exists about how such comprehensive digital mediation facilitates the continuity of a traditional family system.

Some scholars specifically focus on the repercussions that inherently unequal power dynamics within kinship extend into digitally mediated family communication, raising issues such as privacy invasion and the intervention of elder authority in youngsters’ media behaviors (Child & Westermann, 2013; Fang & Gong, 2020). Once young individuals befriend their authoritative family members on social media, they might face a privacy dilemma, and the authority within the kinship might compel them to adjust their online activities (Child & Westermann, 2013). Fang and Gong (2020) correlated these issues stemming from an unequal power structure within familial relationships with a distinct collectivist family context, drawing evidence from China.

Individuals involved in digitally mediated family communication also face self-presentation conflicts resulting from context collapse (Costa, 2018; Yang, 2018). The reason is that social platforms gather various kinds of imagined and discrete audiences, such as relatives, working partners, friends, and more, requiring individuals to simultaneously present corresponding social roles in diverse and unrelated social contexts rooted in different behavior norms (Costa, 2018; Li et al., 2023; Marwick & boyd, 2011). Fang and Gong (2020) highlight that the online self-presentation conflicts among youngsters are heightened when they encounter authoritarian relatives. Nevertheless, individuals can subjectively utilize platform functions to establish appropriate online interaction contexts aligned with their diverse social roles within a given sociocultural context. In doing so, they can adjust their self-presentation accordingly to prevent the collapse of contexts on social media (Costa, 2018; Li et al., 2023). This study argues that the traditional Chinese family system, shaped by a well-defined membership structure and family ethics, provides a fixed sociocultural interaction context. This context can direct Chinese people to use technological functions to establish clear boundaries, differentiating online family interactions from other social contexts.

There has been a growing specific research interest in digitally mediated migrant families as well, leading to the development of polymedia theory. Polymedia is a communication environment that horizontally integrates various media, technologies, and applications, facilitating the remote mediation of communications, relationships, and intimacy among geographically separated family members (Madianou & Miller, 2012, 2013; Madianou, 2016). In the study by Madianou and Miller (2012), transnational migrant mothers deliberately shifted and combined various media, instead of relying on a single medium, to interact with different family members for distinct purposes. While Facebook helped them keep up with the ongoing experiences of a wide circle of relatives and acquaintances, they tended to use video-call applications to supervise their children's studies. Despite adopting the role of vigilant supervisors through video calls, these mothers conveyed their love for their children through text-based media, which allowed them to articulate emotions and present themselves as warm mothers. In other words, media selection and utilization depend on the social, moral, and emotional demands of a specific relational practice, as well as the personal roles and ethical interpersonal relationships in specific situations, moving beyond the mere technological functionality of the media (Madianou & Miller, 2012, 2013).

In the polymedia environment, constant connectivity facilitates ambient co-presence, an increased awareness of the daily lives of significant others through the ubiquitous backdrop presence of media, allowing migrants to feel as if they are always connected to their absent families (Madianou, 2016). However, ambient co-presence creates the challenge of managing an influx of information, motivating individuals’ desire for disconnection, and it also enables constant monitoring, leading to privacy issues (Madianou, 2016; Ou & Lin, 2023).

While the polymedia environment has been globally acknowledged and studied, it is imperative to recontextualize the concept within Mainland China, which possesses an isolated local polymedia environment.

Chinese polymedia environment and its coordinator WeChat

In a context where the Chinese government restricts access to many overseas platforms, local Internet companies have offered abundant similar platforms with locally technological and cultural affordances, creating a uniquely isolated Chinese polymedia environment within an absolute Chinese sociocultural context (Xiong & Liu, 2023). Tencent QQ, the earliest Chinese instant communication software inspired by ICQ, gained popularity as a computer-based and later smartphone-based tool among Chinese netizens (Negro et al., 2020). Building upon this foundation, Tencent introduced WeChat in 2011, a smartphone-based application similar to WhatsApp, coinciding with the rise of wireless devices in China (Chen et al., 2018). Since then, Chinese applications have rapidly entered the smartphone arena.

A smartphone is identified as a polymedia environment since it can run multiple applications and facilitate seamless application switching in a democratic manner; furthermore it encourages an always-on mobile lifestyle by integrating ubiquitous Internet functions with portability (Madianou, 2014). Remarkably, in the smartphone-based Chinese polymedia environment, WeChat acts as the coordinator due to its high degree of media convergence and ubiquity of mobile technology; it efficiently coordinates numerous internal media and external applications within a single platform, effectively serving various aspects of the daily lives of Chinese people in today's China, characterized by high population mobility (Xiong & Liu, 2023).

Regarding technological superiority, WeChat users can engage in online conversations through text, images, voice, video, voice/videocalls, and more tools (Chen et al., 2018). It has also introduced diverse social spaces, with the most notable being WeChat-Group and WeChat-Moments. WeChat-Group allows users to organize units for collective activities among internal members, while WeChat-Moments functions as a more public domain, similar to Facebook and Instagram, for users to share their lives and self-presentation with their overall WeChat contacts (Chen et al., 2018). This type of more publicly accessible social space facilitates diverse relational connections and provides interaction functions with a wide segment of audiences (Child & Westermann, 2013). WeChat users can categorize contacts and selectively share their WeChat-Moments posts with specific contacts, granting them the freedom to manage distinct self-presentations for varying relationships (Chen et al., 2018).

Today, WeChat has developed various internal programs, including WeChat-Public Accounts, WeChat-Pay, and WeChat-Miniprograms. External institutions can also insert their programs into WeChat, encompassing services like ride-hailing, food delivery, and more. Many of these programs have been seamlessly integrated into China's transportation, cashless payment, healthcare, censorship, and other governmental systems, and some programs are used by Chinese news agencies, celebrities, organizations, and governments to communicate with the public (Chen et al., 2018).

China's smartphone market and WeChat's technological superiority have helped narrow digital divides among Chinese individuals. First, there is a wide range of smartphones available across different price points, catering to a diverse population (Wang, 2016). These devices enable both mainstream and marginalized individuals in China to conveniently enjoy a digitally connected mobile life, primarily coordinated through WeChat. Second, the abundant media options on WeChat lower the digital literacy barrier for participating in online activities. For instance, WeChat voice messages and calls have gained popularity among netizens with lower educational backgrounds, since these tools obviate the need for typing Chinese characters and reading small-sized texts on small screens (Wang, 2016).

Significantly, certain functions of WeChat are intertwined with traditional sociocultural norms. For example, WeChat's Red-Packet function enables users to participate in a tradition whereby Chinese individuals place cash in a red packet and present it to others during significant occasions such as weddings and traditional festivals (Chen et al., 2018; Negro et al., 2020; Xiong & Liu, 2023). Red-packet holds sociocultural significance for doing Renqing (Favor), a Chinese social norm built upon mutual commitments and indebtedness, fostering a sense of obligation that motivates further favor or gift exchanges. Although WeChat-Transfer also facilitates money sending, it lacks the Renqing (Favor) meaning.

The multidimensional advantages of WeChat have propelled its userbase to exceed 1.3 billion individuals as of March 2023, ¹ nearly matching China's 1.4 billion population in 2022, ² solidifying its position as the top application in the Chinese market. ³ Notably, the existing large userbase of WeChat primarily originated from early users transferring their contacts from Tencent QQ, mainly comprising family, friends, and professional connections (Chen et al., 2018). This makes WeChat serve as a specific hub for Chinese individuals to centralize their acquaintance networks, establishing it as the primary platform for family communication in China, particularly in mobile situations (Chen et al., 2018; Fang & Gong, 2020; Ou & Lin, 2023).

This study aims to explore how WeChat enables Chinese internal migrants to sustain the static units and dynamic practices of their families in alignment with traditional patterns, thereby facilitating the connectedness of geographically separated families and the continuity of the entire traditional Chinese family system in today's liquid China. The article will address three questions: (1) How are traditional Chinese family units digitalized through WeChat? (2) What are the intergenerational and gendered ethics practices within Chinese families on WeChat? (3) What are the features of ethically guided intimacy practices within Chinese families on WeChat?

Methodology

The author collected data through in-depth interviews and ethnography involving 48 Chinese internal migrants in Guangdong province, China, from December 2021 to August 2022. This area has been at the forefront of China's socialist market economy reforms since 1979, attracting more internal migrants than other regions in China until the 2020s (Liang, 2001; Qiu et al., 2020). The author migrated to this area for study and work between 2011 and 2019. This personal context facilitated the author's recruitment of some eligible participants through personal contacts. Utilizing a snowball sampling approach, the author identified new participants by leveraging recommendations from the initial recruits. Among the 48 participants, 27 are female, and 21 are male, ranging in age from 24 to 63. Their occupations span from low-end to high-end industries.

The author adhered to the ethical guidelines of the British Sociological Association, ensuring ethical practices throughout the research. Participants were informed about the research purpose and procedures. The one-on-one in-depth interviews followed a semi-structured format, guided by three groups of open-ended questions. The interviews began by collecting participants’ demographic information and their perspectives on Chinese family and kinship. Participants were then asked to illustrate their WeChat family groups, detailing the formation processes, membership structure, and group activities. Finally, participants shared their experiences on how WeChat was used to interact with relatives and engage in remote family activities.

Although each interview typically lasted more than an hour, collecting sufficient data from a single interview per participant was challenging. Consequently, the author conducted follow-up interviews with some participants. These follow-up interviews varied in duration, with the longest lasting over an hour and the shortest taking just 10 minutes. Given that the participants resided in different cities, most of the follow-up interviews were conducted via WeChat voice/video calls.

During the in-depth interviews, participants were invited to join ethnographic activities, which combined offline and online observations, along with informal conversations, to gain profound insights into individuals’ thoughts and behaviors in both physical and virtual spaces (Reeves et al., 2008). Ten of them agreed. The author spent as much time as possible with them during their leisure activities, closely observing how they used WeChat to contact their families in daily lives. For instance, the author occasionally accompanied them in relaxed activities, such as eating out and shopping, to encourage them to casually share their inner thoughts, display the interactions in their WeChat family groups and WeChat-Moments, and update their daily experiences. The informal conversations focused on their immediate behaviors, which echoed certain responses given in the in-depth interviews, such as their urgency to reply to messages in their WeChat family groups.

The author used WeChat to maintain casual conversations with 10 participants. As trust developed, the author requested to observe their WeChat-Moments posts. Eight of them agreed; however, some had set their WeChat-Moments posts to be visible for a limited time, such as three days or one month. To address this issue, the author obtained permission to use their smartphones to scan their past WeChat-Moments posts during an offline meeting. During this process, the author captured the comments and other interactions from their contacts marked as kinship appellations. The online observation had another limitation as the author was unable to join the participants’ WeChat family groups to gather data. Thus, the author requested some participants to share relevant screenshots of the interactions within their family groups that they mentioned in the interviews. All ethnographic data was documented in an electronic fieldwork diary, and relevant screenshots were incorporated.

The author employed the software Nvivo to deal with the interview transcripts and ethnography data. Following Braun and Clarke's (2006) six-step thematic analysis process, which includes familiarizing with data, generating initial codes, searching for, reviewing, defining, and titling themes, all the data were analyzed and compared. While familiarizing with the data, the author highlighted descriptions related to migration, family, relatives, family ethics, traditions, intimacy, digital media, WeChat family groups, and other keywords relevant to the research. Similarities and contrasts among participants’ data were noted, particularly regarding their generational background and gender. This initial analysis helped identify vague concepts about the features of digitized Chinese family units on WeChat and the intergenerational and gendered ethics and intimacy practices within various WeChat spaces for doing family. These concepts were further developed into initial codes and themes. By linking the preliminary findings to Chinese family ethics and referencing family and polymedia theories, the author re-evaluated and refined the coding process, ultimately generating three themes to present the findings. To protect participants’ privacy, this article employs anonymized personal information to present the data.

Findings and discussion

Static Chinese family units constructed as traditional models on WeChat

All the participants had connected with almost all their relatives via WeChat, and most of their relatives had settled in different regions. Almost all of them had joined WeChat-Groups established by their nuclear and extended families. Some participants mentioned that elders from their extended families were interested in inviting distant relatives to these groups, thus enlarging the size of their family groups. Gradually, their online extended families had transformed into online units of small lineages.

The elders in their extended families were also eager to gather the older generations within the same lineages, creating and activating their lineages’ WeChat-Groups. They then directly added the younger generations into these groups without inquiring. Traditionally, elders, especially males, act as the heads of their nuclear families, extended families, and small lineages. They also serve as members of the committee within their lineages, giving them the authority to decide on other family members’ private behaviors, particularly those of the younger generations (Zhang, 2018; Zhao, 2022). When young individuals befriend authoritative relatives on social media, innate power imbalances in their relationships extend to influence these young individuals’ behaviors within the digital space (Child & Westermann, 2013; Fang & Gong, 2020). Consequently, the online families of most participants had expanded to the lineage level, which is the highest hierarchical Chinese family unit.

When the previously established WeChat-Groups for participants’ extended families were completely transformed into groups for their small lineages or lineages, it became unsuitable to discuss internal matters within these groups. Thus, their extended families created new WeChat-Groups. This virtual spatial division resembles the traditional household division, where a large-size Chinese family would explicitly divide family members, homeplaces, farms, and other properties among subordinate families (Fei, 1962; Tsui, 1989).

In traditional Chinese society, separate domestic spaces existed for different generations and genders of relatives to engage in various activities. This intergenerational and gender-based domestic spatial division has been digitized through WeChat-Groups. Almost all participants have joined WeChat-Groups organized by relatives belonging to the same gender and generation in their small lineages and/or lineages. In essence, WeChat provides a digital space to construct complete static units of the traditional Chinese family system.

These static family units are displayed and evidenced by the names of the WeChat family groups. Participants’ nuclear family groups were commonly named “Happy Family” or “Close Family,” echoing the Chinese family brief of “Jiahewanshixing” (All things flourish in a harmonious family). The WeChat-Groups for larger-size families and lineages of most participants typically use paternal surnames along with the original locations of the families as group names, such as “Liang's Fortress” or “Hao's Bay.” This naming principle is reminiscent of how rural communities based on blood ties were named in traditional Chinese society, emphasizing the blood relations between individuals, families, and lineages, fostering a culturally psychological attachment of Chinese migrants to their geographic origins (Watson, 2004; Zhang, 2018).

WeChat offered functions to assist participants in displaying and identifying various kinships within their hierarchical family groups. Participants were accustomed to remarking their relatives’ WeChat accounts with corresponding kinship appellations. Consequently, their relatives’ names were automatically displayed in the form of the remarked appellations within their family groups, replacing their accounts’ names. This allowed participants to clearly know all the relationships and generational positions among the members in their WeChat family groups. It ensures that family group membership is primarily understood as kinship rather than as online friendships (Fang & Gong, 2020), reinforcing the hierarchy within kinship.

WeChat-Group also permits everyone in a group to set a specific alias, typically following the format provided by the group administrator. Yumin (63, Female, Retired architect) encouraged relatives in their small lineage to set personal aliases for their family WeChat-Group based on traditional rules for recording the Chinese family tree:

Since my father is the oldest brother in his generation, representing the oldest generation in the WeChat-Group, his alias is “1-his name.” My brother's alias is “1-1-his name,” and mine is “1-2-my name” and so forth. These aliases enable all family members in the group, particularly newcomers, to identify generational positions and relations within our small lineage.

After the established WeChat-Groups have integrated the multilayered units of participants’ families, the technologically linked kinship appellations and manually set aliases in both contact lists and family groups display the mutual recognition of relationships among family members. This system assists involved family members in identifying and confirming their family roles, duties, and values, thereby substantiating the enduring existence of the family entity and its relationships (Cabalquinto, 2020; Finch, 2007, 2011; Waruwu, 2022).

Intergenerational and gendered family ethics practices transitioned into cyberspace

WeChat enables seamless coordination of alternative media and social spaces, allowing participants to remotely engage dynamic family practices with their relatives. The constant connection fosters ambient co-presence, allowing participants to stay acutely aware of their relatives’ daily lives amid the pervasive presence of ubiquitous media (Madianou, 2016). However, they also experienced the overwhelming cognitive load of their relatives’ lives, which led to a reduced desire for family interaction. Nonetheless, the strong influence of traditional family ethics reminded them of their duty to do essential family practices. Wenhe (36, Male, Entrepreneur) described:

When my small lineage was celebrating my eldest uncle's birthday in our group, I joined in by sending identical texts as other relatives. Meanwhile, I privately sent a video and a Red-Packet to him.

Wenhe followed the same celebratory manner as other relatives, although it seemed less heartfelt, to maintain decorum and respect family boundaries. Since the eldest uncle holds the highest seniority within their small lineage, he switched to a private chat and sent a video with a WeChat Red-Packet to convey his respect. This reflects that a polymedia environment allows individuals to intentionally shift and combine suitable media to convey purposeful sociality and morality in relationship practices (Madianou & Miller, 2012, 2013).

Compared to private chats, WeChat-Groups and WeChat-Moments related to family communication serve as the primary arenas for engaging in family practices. Given that these two domains are (semi)public, participants were consistently observed by their relatives and acquaintances on WeChat. The gaze compelled them to adhere to ethical rules in their online family practices. This echoes the idea that when under external gaze, the actions of doing and displaying family are embellished to seek acceptance from those observing (Finch, 2011; Henze-Pedersen & Järvinen, 2021).

Participants’ online family ethics practices show intergenerational and gendered differences. When young participants interacted with elders in their WeChat family groups, they were required to type the elders’ formal appellations. Xiushui (50, Male, Security staff) affirmed this requirement and added:

I declined my nephew's direct request to befriend me through our family group. He should have first asked his father, who is my peer, to inquire about my willingness.

The issues reflect that elders wield authority within digitally mediated Chinese families, compelling young generations to respect their authority through digital ways. Furthermore, Chinese elders typically serve as family leaders (Zhang, 2018), naturally assuming the right to dominate online activities and set online behavior rules within their families. Yumin (63, Female, Retired architect) shared:

The younger generation in our small lineage group only engaged when they were mentioned (@) to check information directed at them. My brother has issued a regulation using the Group-Notice, obliging everyone to actively participate in group conversations.

Young participants use Mute-Notification to avoid disruptions from their WeChat family groups. However, driven by the duty of performing family ethics, they occasionally enter these groups to review conversation history and mechanically respond, particularly during significant occasions. This is a way for them to display respect for their elders and perform the etiquettes of the younger generation.

Family elders’ authority further influences young participants’ WeChat-Moments usage. Young participants “liked” their senior relatives’ posts without necessarily feeling emotionally motivated to do so. Since all their relatives are mutual WeChat contacts, their “likes” serve to display their understanding of proper etiquette within the kinship network.

Some young participants frequently employed WeChat-Moments posts to showcase their transformation into urban lifestyle trendsetters. This type of social media usage is popular among young migrants since they desire communicating such alternative self-presentations to their hometown acquaintances, emphasizing their successful migration and elevated social status (Mendoza & Morgade, 2020). Muliang (27, Male, Livestreaming-driven sales) often visited fashion shops and shared these experiences on his WeChat-Moments. Jiwen (32, Female, Housewife) sometimes relaxed with friends in pubs and posted these moments on her WeChat-Moments.

However, WeChat-Moments is a more publicly accessible space, similar to Facebook, which facilitates diverse relational interactions for a wide segment of audiences (Child & Westermann, 2013), resulting in context collapse and subsequent online self-presentation conflicts (Costa, 2018; Li et al., 2023; Marwick & boyd, 2011). Furthermore, conflicts among Chinese youngsters of this kind are heightened when they encounter authoritarian relatives on social media, often leading them to receive preachy comments and behavioral directives from these relatives (Fang & Gong, 2020). Young participants who posted about their urban lives affirmed this situation, since these posts were seen as a departure from their default identity as conservative small-town youth shaped by their traditional family backgrounds. Muliang (27, Male, Livestreaming-driven sales) described:

My WeChat-Moments posts have caused some of my relatives to perceive me as someone solely focused on entertainment. My uncle commented on a set of photos I posted, advising me to save money for my parents.

Jiwen’s (32, Female, Housewife) mother promptly scolded her via WeChat-Call, urging her to remove the photos of her drinking. Consequently, young people selectively presented specific aspects of themselves in line with traditional roles to their contacts tagged “relative” within WeChat-Moments. These cases mirror the fact that when young people befriend authoritative relatives on social media, they might be compelled to limit certain aspects of their self-presentation, creating a more acceptable image for this specific segment of the audience (Child & Westermann, 2013; Fang & Gong, 2020). These findings also indicate that the privacy settings and other functions offered by WeChat empower individuals to subjectively define an appropriate online family interaction context aligned with their ethical roles within a given Chinese family setting. This enables them to adjust their self-presentation accordingly, preventing the collapse of this specific context (Li et al., 2023).

Traditional gendered family ethics have also extended into the digital spheres of Chinese families. Certain male participants serve as representatives of their nuclear and extended families, responsible for remotely organizing both online and offline events for their small lineages and lineages. Qianyu (48, Male, Entrepreneur) introduced:

I have been authorized to lead our lineage. I utilized WeChat to remotely collect funds from nuclear families within our lineage and allocated these funds to the elders.

Females have fewer opportunities to direct formal family events within virtual family domains, in accordance with traditional Chinese family values. For instance, Fengyue (50, Female, Factory owner) refrains from actively participating in the online and offline events organized by her small lineage and lineage:

My oldest brother assumed the role of our family representative. In cases of significant family or lineage events, he would forward pertinent information from the WeChat-Groups of our small lineage and family to me.

Notably, Fengyue is excluded from the WeChat family groups dedicated to managing the dividends from her father's farmland and other real estate holdings in her hometown village. However, her brother, who resides in the village, is a member of these groups. She explained this inequality using a Chinese proverb that likens a married daughter to splashed water. This proverb was mentioned by two other female participants. The foundation of this explanation lies in traditional Chinese family values, which dictate that a married daughter becomes a part of her husband's family and should detach from her natal family's affairs and assets (Fei, 1962).

Participants complained about various kinds of digitally mediated family ethics practices. Paradoxically, they acknowledged the effectiveness of these ethics practices in maintaining an appearance of harmony within the family, even though this harmony is pretended in most situations. It echoes that although the online interaction within collectivist Chinese families may not actually contribute to family closeness, it can improve family solidarity (Fang & Gong, 2020).

The online family practices mentioned all serve to solidify traditional Chinese family ethics. The widespread use of WeChat as a mass communication channel further amplifies the propagation of these stereotypical ethics. Some older participants shared abundant content from WeChat Public-Accounts and external platforms. This content primarily promotes values that adhere to China's content censorship policies, which are in line with the principles of Chinese socialism rooted in traditional cultural ideologies. Yingzi (48, Female, Shop owner) shared many articles on her WeChat-Moments. The articles advocate filial piety and traditional Chinese motherhood. These participants employ this method to reaffirm and display their own familial roles, simultaneously disseminating these values within their WeChat networks.

Ethically guided Chinese-style intimacy fostered in digitally doing Chinese families

The integration of alternative media and social domains on WeChat facilitated participants in achieving intimacy practices with their important relatives as well. Such intimacy practices are largely guided by ethical principles within the Chinese context, where expressions of care, love, and emotions tend to be indirect and subtle (Dion & Dion, 1993; Fei, 1992). Most of these practices were prompted by ambient co-presence mediated by WeChat, rather than being actively initiated by the participants or their relatives. Muliang (Male, 27, Livestreaming-driven sales) described:

I lost my job but kept it a secret. A week later, my mother realized the situation when she noticed that my daily step count on WeChat-Sports was almost zero. She sent me voice messages, inquiring about the reasons. I finally revealed the truth to her. Then she transferred money to support me.

Muliang showed his WeChat-Sports, explaining that the records are visible to mutual contacts in the daily rankings. Most participants consider it unnecessary to exchange emotions with their family members, including their parents or children. Some adhered to the ethical “Baoxibubaoyou” principle, which dictates that adults should only report happy events instead of anxious ones to their parents. Thus, polymedia-mediated ambient co-presence, a ubiquitous recognition of others’ lives through the background presence of omnipresent media (Madianou, 2016), enabled participants and their relatives to navigate suitable times and methods for implicitly engaging in intimacy practices and cuing their need for support. This reflects that ambient co-presence is significant in initiating digitally mediated Chinese-style intimacy practices.

The digitally mediated Chinese-style intimacy practices, which are ethically guided to remain indirect and implicit, involve mediation through various internal and external media coordinated by WeChat. Yuanzhu (34, Female, Tailor) shared links from a karaoke application on her WeChat-Moments. The links recorded the songs that she sang with her daughter from a distance, expressing her love for her daughter. Muliang (Male, 27, Livestreaming-driven sales) mentioned:

I often share webpages of popular dramas from Douban Film in the WeChat chat between my mother and me. This helps initiate our interaction, as we discuss the dramas and the comments, indirectly conveying my emotional thoughts to her.

Intimacy practices mainly occurred in participants’ nuclear and extended families and were more favored by young individuals and women. This contrasts with the traditional family ethics practices that were primarily directed by senior generations and males within small lineages and lineages. These features arise from traditional Chinese family ethics, wherein women are the default caregivers responsible for emotional matters (Fei, 1962; Hsu, 2021).

A few participants additionally mentioned that their illiterate grandparents or elderly parents had also registered WeChat accounts in recent years. These elders found it easy to navigate WeChat's different social spaces and participate in activities like grabbing WeChat Red-Packets in family groups. Grabbing Red-Packets in WeChat-Groups had turned into a game-like activity, enhancing indirect intimacy practices among group members, although WeChat Red-Packets exchanged in one-to-one interactions retained the traditional custom of doing Renqing (Favor). As these uniquely Chinese forms of intimacy practice attracted marginalized individuals, especially older generations, in digitalized family units, the virtual representation of the traditional Chinese family became more systematically complete.

Conclusion

This study rethinks digitally mediated family through considering family as an entire system that encompasses both static units and dynamic practices. The dynamic practices focus on family ethics practices and ethically guided intimacy practices. The study challenges the primary focus on affective intimacy practices within familial dynamics in global polymedia environments (Alinejad, 2019; Baldassar, 2016; Cabalquinto, 2018; Madianou & Miller, 2012; Waruwu, 2023). It contends that such a new form of family mediation can be achieved through the coordinator of a localized polymedia environment—a dominant multifunctional platform possessing advanced technological convergence and sociocultural affordances, such as WeChat (Xiong & Liu, 2023).

The traditional Chinese family units have been digitalized in the form of WeChat-Groups, serving as virtual displays of homeplaces, origins, and membership of Chinese families, in line with Weigel’s (2008) view of understanding a static family as a “thing” composed of family members who share the same homeplace. Digitally mediated family ethics practices via WeChat within Chinese families, including ethically guided intimacy practices, showcase the dynamic family concept, wherein everyday interactions among family members construct experiences that define family bonds (Finch, 2007, 2011; Morgan, 2011). This study indicates that, although Western individualism has influenced Chinese youth (Fang & Gong, 2020), Chinese collectivist family values continue to dominate their adherence to traditional ethics in a digital family context. This study also reflects that Chinese-style intimacy practices are still ethically guided to remain implicit (Dion & Dion, 1993), necessitating polymedia-mediated ambient co-presence for Chinese individuals to discern the appropriate moments for performing Chinese-style intimacy.

This study affirms that inherent power imbalances within kinships, particularly the authority of elders, significantly constrain individuals’ online behaviors within familial interaction contexts (Child & Westermann, 2013; Fang & Gong, 2020), aligning them with local traditional family norms. It remarkably argues that when family interactions are centralized on a dominant multifunctional platform that converges various aspects of individuals’ social lives, an entire local traditional family system, shaped by a well-defined membership structure and clear ethics, provides a predetermined context to guide individuals in actively utilizing the platform's functions to create a specific online familial setting. The familial context is exclusively inhabited by particular audiences for family communication, effectively distinguishing family practices from other social contexts on the platform. Simultaneously, the digitally mediated authority and ethics within kinships compel individuals to maintain their exclusive family communication contexts, adhering to traditional patterns in every corner of the platform. These elements together contribute to perpetuating a local traditional family system amid the comprehensive digitalization of static family units and dynamic family practices.

This study highlights that the interplay between technological affordances and individuals’ subjectivity in digitally mediated ethics practices is significant for enabling family systems’ stability and continuity in a liquid society, where kinship networks often experience geographic separation. It offers innovative perspectives for family studies. Future studies could further explore the digitalization of traditional family units and ethical practices in other countries that have localized digital media environments within their sociocultural contexts. The findings of this study are limited to the perspectives of internal migrants residing in the most modernized cities of China. Future research could also explore the viewpoints of left-behind family members who mostly reside in traditional regions and maintain conventional values.