Digitally mediating Tibetan Buddhism for Han Chinese audiences: a study of the missionary milieu of Sinophone Tibetan Buddhism on WeChat.

This project will undertake an in-depth study of the digital mediation of Tibetan Buddhism in the WeChat domain, with a focus on Tibetan Buddhism’s construction as an object of knowledge and religious consumption for Sinophone audiences. Not only will it critically examine the prisms and practices through which Tibetan Buddhism is represented on public pages, it will also ethnographically explore the social processes through which these pages are produced and consumed. The impact of this content among ethnic Tibetans in China and Tibetan Buddhist followers in Hong Kong and Taiwan will also be investigated. The present study expects to significantly enrich understandings of the locally inflected transmission of Tibetan Buddhism in the contemporary Sinophone world and the importance of the digital in this process.