Six (mis)conceptions of wanghong research: Carwyn James Morris in conversation with Crystal Abidin on the ‘Straw starter pack’

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In this article, geographer Carwyn James Morris and anthropologist Crystal Abidin are in dialogue about trends within wanghong research. The authors were invited by the Editor-in-Chief of Communication Research and Practice to offer commentary on a cutting-edge issue and elected to spotlight the considerations, concerns, contradictions, and chasms in conducting research on wanghong cultures. Throughout the conversation, we describe common (mis)conceptions of wanghong research as straw man arguments or ‘Straws’, including wanghong as: A Chinese phenomenon; influencers; trend; frivolous commerce; soft power; tourism. Carwyn James Morris is a human geographer exploring digitalising cities; he examines how social media reproduces the city and vice versa. Crystal Abidin is an anthropologist of vernacular internet cultures specialising in the Asia Pacific region; she is an ethnographer of internet celebrity. This is part one of a two-part series.