“You Wait for Me for a Moment”: Mobile Usage of the Elderly Female Adults in China to Cope with COVID-19

Using a case study of a unique demographic, namely, elderly female users of ICTs retired from state-owned enterprises in Xinjiang, we attempt to make a conceptual and empirical contribution to the study area of an ageing population, their use of mobile media during the COVID-19 pandemic. This contributes to the overall theme of this edited volume in examining the experience and expertise from China: the mobile way. Informed by a Deleuzian conceptualisation of assemblage, a dynamic arrangement of technologies, human agencies, and social relationships, we examine the co-shaping of mobile technologies and the agency of elderly female users in containing and coping with the COVID-19 health crisis as lived experience. With findings generated from our 16 interviews and our walk-through observation, we discovered three themes in the process of digital management and surveillance initiated from a top-down manner yet orchestrated and responded from a bottom-up fashion in China, namely, the socially supervised and assisted support, the handling of disinformation, as well as the digital engagement and privacy concerns.