People are today located in media ecosystems in which a variety of ICT devices and platforms coexist and complement each other to fulfil users’ heterogeneous requirements. These multi-media affordances promote a highly hyperlinked and nomadic habit of digital data management which blurs the long-standing boundaries between information storage, sharing and exchange. Specifically, during the pervasive sharing and browsing of fragmentary digital information (e.g. photos, videos, online diaries, news articles) across various platforms, life experiences and knowledge involved are meanwhile classified and stored for future retrieval and collective memory construction. For international migrants who straddle different geographical and cultural contexts, management of various digital materials is particularly complicated as they have to be familiar with and appropriately navigate technological infrastructures of both home and host countries. Drawing on ethnographic observations of 40 Chinese migrant mothers in Singapore, this article delves into their quotidian routines of acquiring, storing, sharing and exchanging digital information across a range of ICT devices and platforms, as well as cultural and emotional implications of these mediated behaviours for their everyday life experiences. A multi-layer and multi-sited repertoire of ‘life archiving’ was identified among these migrant mothers in which they leave footprints of everyday life through a tactical combination of interactive sharing, pervasive tagging and backup storage of diverse digital content.

今天，人们处在媒体生态系统中，在其中，各种ICT设备和平台共存并相互补充，可以满足用户的不同需求。这些多媒体功能促进了数字数据管理的高度链接和游牧习惯，这模糊了信息存储，共享和交换之间的长期界限。具体而言，在跨各种平台的零碎数字信息（例如照片，视频，在线日记，新闻文章）的普遍共享和浏览过程中，所涉及的生活经验和知识将同时进行分类和存储，以备将来检索和建立集体记忆之用。对于跨越不同地理和文化背景的国际移民，各种数字资料的管理特别复杂，因为它们必须熟悉本国和所在国的技术基础设施并进行适当的导航。本文基于对40位新加坡华裔移民母亲的人种学观察，深入研究了他们在一系列ICT设备和平台上获取，存储，共享和交换数字信息的日常例行程序，以及这些介导行为的文化和情感含义。他们的日常生活经历。在这些移民母亲中，他们发现了“生活存档”的多层和多地点清单，通过互动共享，普遍标记和备份存储各种数字内容的策略组合，他们在日常生活中留下了足迹。