Platform Jumping as Religious Practice: Digital Strategies of Chinese Christians in Sweden

Sammanfattning

Transnational migrant communities increasingly depend on digital platforms to sustain social connections, cultural practices, and community life across borders. For Chinese Christian migrants, digital media practices are shaped by both diasporic needs and the influence of China's digital surveillance and censorship, which extends beyond national borders. While existing research has explored Chinese overseas Christian communities in various regions, studies focusing on Northern Europe are still scarce, and even fewer have talked about their media practices. This raises several questions: How do Chinese Christians in Nordic countries engage with digital media in their everyday religious and social life? How do they navigate digital surveillance, censorship, and platform regulation? How are their diasporic experiences and community structures shaped through digital practices? To answer these questions, this study investigates how members of the Nordic Chinese Christian Church (NCCC) Malmo use digital platforms to sustain religious practices and community life, focusing on how they negotiate identity, belonging, and faith expression across physical and digital boundaries. The thesis used a qualitative approach combining digital ethnography, participant observation and in-depth interviews to explore the media practices of NCCC Malmo members. Qualitative data were collected through fieldwork over a three-month period, engaging with church activities both online and offline. This study found that members of NCCC Malmo strategically employed platforms such as Zoom, WhatsApp, and worship slides to create hybrid religious spaces that combined physical gatherings with digital participation. This practice reflected a broader strategy of platform jumping, where members moved flexibly across different platforms to balance accessibility, inclusion, and security, which demonstrated adaptability to the diverse needs of a diasporic context. To manage the potential risks of Chinese digital surveillance, members shifted sensitive communications from WeChat to WhatsApp and used strategies such as self-censorship as precaution. Digital media further shaped diasporic identity: first-generation members relied on WhatsApp for religious engagement, while second-generation youth preferred platforms like Instagram and Facebook, reflecting generational hybridity. Gender dynamics were also evident in digital spaces, where traditional roles continued but females increasingly participated in leadership and organizational responsibilities, showing how religious, cultural, and gender intersected in diasporic religious life.