Walking online

Abstract

This chapter is based on a netnographic approach that was chosen due to the development of Chinese online communities dedicated to specific leisure and tourism pursuits. In China, the development of online communities has allowed the formation of new hybrid worlds in which people interact among each other in combination of both the physical and digital worlds, allowing spatially and socially more stretched social networks. In a country with rapid urban development, nature and walking in nature in particular is viewed increasingly by the Chinese middle classes, who live in the major urban centres, as a way of slowing down and moving differently from the dominant logic of speed. Chinese society is often seen as of a highly collectivist nature in which identities are constructed around community and social networks rather than personal achievements and individual traits. This idea of a more collectivist orientation appears to hold true to an extent within online hiking communities in China as well.