WeChat in general
III. THE BENEFITS OF WECHAT FOR USERS
In the following paragraphs, we will discuss users’ perception of how WeChat has helped them integrate into society when they move to a new location, how they evaluate the different contents and aspects of CCR CSR’ s WeSupport platform on WeChat, and what the potential gaps are for improvement. We will present the quantitative results from the worker survey together with what we found through qualitative interviews.
WeChat in general
63.5 % of the users reported that WeChat very much helped them integrate into life in their new location( Chart 13). However, their age, gender, education level or rural migration are not likely to play a significant role in how useful they found WeChat to be.
WeChat made it easier for most users to make new friends and enrich their social life, and for 4 out 10 parents the most important function of WeChat is to stay connected to their left-behind children.
Chart 13: Did WeChat help with social integration?
No, did not help
Not applicable 1.7 % 0.2 %
Yes, partly 34.6 %
Yes, very much 63.5 %
Almost all interviewed workers who moved to a new location to seek work said WeChat made it easier for them to make new friends and to enrich their social life. Li Hua
15 is a typical case of a young migrant worker trying to build his / her social network in a place far from home.
The Story of Li Hua
Li Hua, 31 years old, left her hometown in Hubei Province when she was 18 and came to work in Guangdong. At the beginning, Li Hua struggled to make new friends in her busy factory life.“ Later, smart phones started to get popular, and everybody around me started to use WeChat. Very quickly, I managed to reconnect with my old friends back home, and gradually learned how to make new friends on WeChat... I’ m glad my social circle is not only limited to my coworkers at the factory”- Li Hua said.
16
15. All names used in this report are aliases