At this stage, I will continue to gather more information to improve my digital media concept before starting my proposal. I keep studying the concept of interactive documentary. Dr. Nash (2017) pointed out I-docs frequently aspires to expand the documentary’s political role, particularly by providing new ways to be engaged in social issues and opportunities to form self-representation. His point of view is exactly what I want to highlight in my digital media concept.

In 2008, sixteen infants in Gansu Province, China were diagnosed with kidney stones. All of them had been fed with the milk powder that was found to have been adulterated with a toxic industrial compound called melamine. Four months later, according to the statistics, around 300,000 babies in China were sick from the contaminated milk, and it might be shocking that 6 babies died from the kidney damage. (Huang, 2017) The Sanlu Group, one of the largest dairy producers in China, was identified the chief culprit. It was a horrible scandal in China at that time and since then, most wealthy young mothers or families have lost trust in China’s milk powder market and a large number of mothers set their sights on the Australian milk powder market.

Chinese mothers believe that Australia is the place generating pure milk with strict dairy framing, natural grazing grassland as well as good ecological production. Also, in Australia, there are no genetically modified products, and pesticides, fertilizers and other chemical agents are not used, so they think Australian’s milk powder is the purest and the most natural.

Therefore, because of Chinese mothers’ demand for milk powder, some ‘Daigous’ aim to gain profits. They hoard and cut the supply of local infant formals, thus local mothers lack baby formula and the pharmacy have long been out of stock.

My interactive documentary aims at people engaged in this social issue and I hope to gain a more in-depth understanding of this issue through the interactive approach. And I hope to interview several local mother victims to evoke daigou and Chinese buyers to reflect on themselves and wish relevant government sections can formulate appropriate policies to deal with this.

 

Huang, Y.2017, Forbes Welcome, viewed 22 August 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/yanzhonghuang/2014/07/16/the-2008-milk-scandal-revisited/#120d19474105

Nash, K 2017, ‘I-docs and the documentary tradition: exploring questions of engagement’, in Aston, J & Gaudenzi, S & Rose, M (eds), I-docs: The Evolving Practices of Interactive Documentary. Columbia University Press.