Control or Care? The Mobile Media Panopticon in Chinese Trans-Local Families

This study discusses the ways in which power is negotiated, and dynamics are shaped through mobile media in Chinese families living in trans-local contexts. While traditional Chinese family values emphasize parental responsibility and moral guidance, the heavy reliance on connections made through digital media because of trans-locality introduces new tensions between involvement and the pursuit of independence by children. Drawing on panopticism and the typology of power, including power over, power with, and power to, this analysis establishes a relational framework for unpacking the processes of how authority, autonomy, and care are negotiated in digitally mediated parent–child interactions. Findings from digital diaries and interviews with 20 Chinese trans-local families suggest that the affordances provided by mobile media act as an infrastructure of power, enabling differentiated power schemes that restructure family dynamics. These schemes vary in intensity and consequence, from coercive compliance to negotiated cooperation and trust-based autonomy. Based on these schemes, the study further proposes a mobile media panoptic model to illustrate the dynamic processes of power negotiation in these mobile family interactions. Moving beyond behavioral accounts, this study provides a process-based analysis of how power is enacted and contested in mediated family life. It contributes to understandings of how digital technologies transform family dynamics in the context of mobility and cultural expectations.