Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This study explores how college students understand and perceive of parenting through naturally occurring interaction and beliefs of practices on Social Media. Through an ethnography approach, these college students present a vivid picture of what means to be a child and what means to be parents in Chinese culture. Being a proper child means to be obedience and filial piety in Chinese culture, while being a good mother means to practice well child training. The training includes both governance of socially desirable behaviors and expression of love and care. As remote parents are geographically separated from their child, this kind of child training are implementing through social media. With the affordance of social media, remote parents not only teach their children, but also provide them with emotional support. However, on social media, the child plays a leading role in parent-child interaction, which creates a new mode of family communication often warmer and more friend-like.