ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I focus on analysing how intercultural boundaries were experienced, enacted, and negotiated in Chinese international students’ everyday use of Facebook. I first unpack their expectations of and desires for cultural diversity in their social networks in Australia. Chinese international students’ accounts of intercultural relationships foreground how Australia was mainly seen as a White nation. I then analyse how Facebook has been imagined and practised by Chinese international students as a digital ‘contact zone’ in which different cultures co-exist and mingle. This was particularly a result of the sociotechnical boundaries between the Chinese Internet and its Western counterpart. Following this, I closely investigate how Chinese international students encountered cultural differences online. I focus on how intercultural boundaries were experienced and understood in their everyday online interactions with cultural others, and how these interactions spoke to their offline experiences. These mediated encounters exemplify the asymmetrical power relations within contact zones, which generated uneven opportunities for and access to interculturality. Finally, I discuss how my participants practised cultural difference online – that is, how they intentionally solidified or blurred boundaries between themselves and the ‘local’ host populations through tactical control and management of what they posted and how they posted them on Facebook.
