身体作为移动媒介——跨境代购中的具身传播实践和身体问题

Bodies as Mobile Media——The Embodied Communication Practices and Communicators’ Bodies in the Cross-Border Shopping

"身体转向"为传播研究带来了新的理论契机,但当前身体视角的回归尚未深挖数字语境下传播者的身体移动带来的技术反思。本文从身体作为"移动媒介"的理论化角度出发,探讨香港跨境代购者的具身传播和身体问题,涵盖(在场与虚拟的)身体移动、网络界面化的移动身体和作为话语的身体移动与移动身体三个层面。文章揭示了移动身体数字化的双向过程(即,肉身空间移动的数据化,具身移动数据的空间往返)如何贯穿并形塑了跨境代购网络。在这个移动传播过程中,身体的物理属性(即位移)、符号属性(即再现)和话语属性(即权力生产的对象)挑战了现有关于"线上-线下"连接方式的认识。身体带来线下-线下之间的张力,塑造了"跨境"过程的丰富内涵。

The"body turn"brings about considerable novel studies in communication field.The current trend of bodies studies however lacks in-depth discussions that take the mobilities of communicators’bodies as an entry point to reflect communication technologies.This paper theorizes"bodies as mobile media"to build on the ideas.Based on ethnographic research of China's Mainland-Hong Kong cross-border shoppers’embodied communicative practices,I characterize three aspects of the theory—"bodies as mobile media"—which includes the onsite and virtual movements of bodies,bodies as mobile interfaces,and discourses of bodily movements and mobile bodies.The study reveals how the double digital movement of mobile bodies(i.e.,spatial movement of corporeal data and embodied movement of mobile data)transcend and transform the cross-border shopping networks of daigou.I argue that,in the mobile communication processes of Hong Kong daigou,the material,symbolic,and discursive features of bodies challenge the existing binary ideas of"online-offline"connections.The shoppers’bodies create tensions between online and offline practices and shape multiple implications of"cross-border"processes.