城乡认同与“原生态”农产品的在线销售——“互联网+”创业、媒介实践与私人生活的商品化

Identification of Rural-Urban Divide and Online Sales of “Pristine” Agricultural Products: Internet+ Entrepreneurship, Media Practice and the Commodification of Private Life

在"互联网+"背景下从事"原生态"农产品在线销售的个体创业者,通常会通过展示农产品的生产过程以及销售者的社会关系和私人生活,来展现和确证所销售农产品原生态的"原真性",以吸引以城市居民为主的消费者。这些销售策略呼应了城市居民对于食品安全的潜在忧虑,从而使得城市居民愿意溢价购买。与此同时,这些策略需要精心地再现和强化既有的城乡认同以及阶层想象图景,才能够获得城市消费者的认可。由此可以讨论,社交媒体和电商平台的技术与社会可供性(affordance),可能已经进入了一种含混(obfuscated)的状态——数字媒介和电商平台在为普通用户提供便捷的创业机会的同时,也在这个过程中复制并强化既有的社会区隔和分化机制。

In China,many individuals in rural and urban areas,encouraged by policies concerning “Internet+” and mass entrepreneurship,have started up their online retailing business in “pristine” agricultural products. To attract buyers mostly from the cities,these entrepreneurs have tried to authenticate the “pristineness” of their products by tactically displaying the production process of their products,their personal social networks and part of their private life. These marketing strategies chime in with the potential concern of the city people about food safety to persuade them into paying more for these products than for their counterparts provided by industrial-scale farming. Moreover, these strategies must also deliberately represent and reinforce the existing identification of the rural- urban divide and social imagination over class segregation,otherwise they will not win the approval of the urban consumers for the pristine products. This indicates that social media and the social affordance of e-commerce platforms may have become obfuscated. While they have created new channels and possibilities for less privileged groups to start up their businesses,the digital media and e-commerce platforms have also duplicated and strengthened the existing mechanism of social divide and class segregation during this empowerment process.