Searching for Digital Asia in its Networks

Where the Spatial Turn Meets the Digital Turn

Where might we find ‘Digital Asia’? This article asks how digital methods can provide a way to search for ‘Digital Asia’ in its networks, interfaces, and media contents. It examines what tools and research methods are available for ‘mapping’ and ‘exploring’ digital spaces, what their strengths and weaknesses might be, and how successful  they ultimately are at offering insights into contemporary politics, society, and culture. Specifically, it asks what a research approach that ‘follows the medium’ can teach us about regional processes, for instance about the common expectation that digital media facilitate transnational, regional cooperation.

Using the example of higher education institutions in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei, the paper explores how search engines, institutional homepages, and hyperlink networks provide access into the workings and representations of academia online. The article finds that even a seemingly cosmopolitan endeavour such as academia exists in rather parochial spheres, and that users that enter those spheres do so in highly biased ways. Further reviewing the digital tools that lead to these findings, the article also argues that while digital methods promise to bring together the ‘digital turn’ and the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, they also pose new challenges. These include theoretical concerns, like the risk of implicitly reproducing views of neoliberal modernity, but also practical concerns related to digital literacy.

This research was made possible with the generous support of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), through a VENI grant for the project ‘Digital Nationalism in China’ (grant 016.134.054). The article is part of the 2015 special issue of Asiascape: Digital Asia that deals with the question: “Where is Digital Asia?”

How to reference this article

Schneider, Florian (2015), ‘Searching for “Digital Asia” in its Networks: Where the Spatial Turn Meets the Digital Turn‘. Asiascape: Digital Asia, 2(1-2), 57-92.

The article is kindly made available here, on this personal website, by the publisher through its Green Publishing policy. It may not be re-posted to the web or digital repositories and may only be used for non-commercial purposes.