Taking off at the height of China’s socio-economic reforms in the mid-1990s, the Internet developed alongside the twists and turns of the country’s rapid transformation. Central to many aspects of social change, the Internet has played an indispensable role in the decentralization of political communication, the expansion of the market, and the stratification of society in China.
Throughthree empirical cases – online privacy, cyber-nationalism, and the network market – this book traces how different social actors engage in negotiation of the practices, social relations, and power structures that define these evolving institutions in Chinese society. Examining rich user-generated social media data with innovative methods such as semantic network analysis and topic modelling, TheWeb of Meaning provides a solid empirical base to critique for critiquing the power relationships that are embedded in the very fibre of Chinese society.
Author(s): Elaine Jingyan Yuan
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 200
City: Toronto
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Internet and Social Change in China
2 The Rise of the Internet as Symbolic Space
3 Assembling Network Privacy
4 Articulating Cyber-nationalism
5 Constructing the Network Market
Conclusion
References
Index