global voices, one world

The closed third day session “Chinese Perspectives on Internet Governance” is going on now and about to wrap up. Over the last two days, we had provocative presentations and thoughtful conversations. Thanks to all for making this a great conference.

Next year’s Chinese Internet Research conference will be held at Peking University, the first time this conference will be held in Mainland China. No doubt it will be exciting!

Hongmei Li first wants to address the concept of nationalism, which was borrowed from the West by scholars such as Yan Fu, and closely related to issues of racial hierarchy. Many 21st Century nationalists call for the expulsion of Manchurian barbarians to purify the nation. Is it possibly to assert China as a unified nation given that it has 56 ethnic groups, class and gender divisions and the like? If not, why, and what are the differences? Also, who has the power to define national interests and actively promote such an agenda? Jeffrey Wasserstrom and many others have done research on how women have been comandeered for national campaigns that places them in a secondary role. Louisa Schein (author of Minority Rules) that Miao women have been framed in a submissive, feminine role of the idealized minority. What is the desired Tibetan identity for Chinese nationalists? Often nationalism is characterized in terms of inferiority and superiority complexes, and Li asks if the panel has considered it in these terms. Duara, she points out, argues that nationalism and transnationalism are often posited as binary ideas, but interactions and connections can be seen following the Tibetan incident. Communism, as well, was a transnational movement and simultaneously used for nationalist purposes. The distinctions between state and popular nationalism must also be clearly delineated, and Li suspects that nationalist groups are influenced by China’s cyberpolice, which she estimates at 50,000. Finally, she opens the question of the impact of the financial crisis on nationalism and nationalists, and to what extent do nationalists really represent the Chinese public?

Rebecca MacKinnon, in question time, points out that it seems that many papers throughout the conference dance around the fact that China’s public sphere is almost entirely online, and if that was the situation in the U.S., for example, “God help us”, since online discussion often has greater extremes of opinion as a “silent majority” goes about their lives and does not participate. Lu Chen says that HFS participants feel they have a tool not available before to bring to justice those who are outside the reach of the law. Fan Dong points out the government censors both anti-government and pro-government speech. Moderator Ang Peng-Hwa talks about picking up the Chinese constitution in a secondhand bookstore and in its free expression section it actually allows the creation of “big character posters”, and that in some ways this prefigures the sort of expression found on the Internet.

Moral Panics and Nationalism

Examining the Factors that Influence College Students’ Attitude towards Human Flesh Search in Mainland China, LU Chen, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chinese Cyber-Nationalism: The Case of 2008 Tibet Uprising Discussions on Facebook, Dian PARAMITA, London School of Economics
From nationalism to emerging public sphere: The case of global Olympic torch relay dispute online, FAN Dong, Annenberg School for Communication, USC
Respondent: Hongmei LI, University of Pennsylvania/Georgia State University
Moderator: ANG Peng Hwa, National University of Singapore

Fan uses Dalgren 6 dimensional theoretical framework to do content analysis of a time line of events from the Tibetan incident on March 14 to the Sichuan earthquake in May, which covers three phases, moving from outward to reflective to tentatively cooperative.

Netizens created lists of principles including using DIY slogans and avoiding government ones to create an autonomous image from the state and economic power, believing it would then alter the government’s policy. The exchange and critique of criticizable moral-practical validity claims can be found in YouTube videos, posters and critical evaluations of media reports such as BBC webpages. They often involved humor and juxtaposition.

With this exchange came reflexivity, as both sides, Chinese and Western, became more accustomed to criticism from the other side and more mature. On the other hand, identity building among online nationalists breaks individuals into different categories, and questions other credentials and authenticity (such as asking overseas Chinese “why did you come back? You always said foreign countries were better?)

Domestically, they conceive of themselves as the public sphere. But internationally, their stance is that as the dissenting counter-public.

Moral Panics and Nationalism

Examining the Factors that Influence College Students’ Attitude towards Human Flesh Search in Mainland China, LU Chen, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chinese Cyber-Nationalism: The Case of 2008 Tibet Uprising Discussions on Facebook, Dian PARAMITA, London School of Economics
From nationalism to emerging public sphere: The case of global Olympic torch relay dispute online, FAN Dong, Annenberg School for Communication, USC
Respondent: Hongmei LI, University of Pennsylvania/Georgia State University
Moderator: ANG Peng Hwa, National University of Singapore

Quick history: the Tibet uprising of March 2008 led to a crackdown, then criticism of China, followed by a response by Chinese netizens, such as Anti-CNN. The goal of Paramita’s research is to identify the characteristics of Chinese cyber-nationalism and whether it contains enough “flaming” to impact on political discussion. Yang Guobin’s notion of an online cultural sphere refers to the ability of the Internet to create transnational discussions between Chinese netizens throughout the world, in PRC, HK, Taiwan, Singapore, the diaspora, and non-Chinese parties of interest. Wu describes Chinese cyber-nationalism as non-government sponsored, grassroots, based on modern ideology and reactive (in this case towards Western media). “Flaming” refers to ridiculing those with opposing points of view.

Political expression on platforms such as Facebook has increased and become more important as it facilitates political discussion. Paramita’s sample was the Facebook group Tibet WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China – the largest group of its kind. She found that there were posts both supporting, opposed and neutral to the PRC government stance on the group from Chinese and non-Chinese surnamed members. 64.9% were positive arguments contributing to the discussion, but 18.5% were flaming (categories range from “unfriendly” to “insulting” and “confrontational” and “aggressive”). The lesser were categorized as “uncivil”, which was 12.5% of total posts, leaving 6% as “impolite” or more severe categories.

Paramita concludes the term “flaming” needs to be deconstructed, since it doesn’t necessary harm the overall debate, and that the discussion was overall productive and civil.

Moral Panics and Nationalism

Examining the Factors that Influence College Students’ Attitude towards Human Flesh Search in Mainland China, LU Chen, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chinese Cyber-Nationalism: The Case of 2008 Tibet Uprising Discussions on Facebook, Dian PARAMITA, London School of Economics
From nationalism to emerging public sphere: The case of global Olympic torch relay dispute online, FAN Dong, Annenberg School for Communication, USC
Respondent: Hongmei LI, University of Pennsylvania/Georgia State University
Moderator: ANG Peng Hwa, National University of Singapore

Lu Chen describes human flesh search as not an engine, but as a collective effort of frequent members of an online community to target and expose an individual’s personal data. It can help people find missing relatives, but it can also harass or be a form of vigilantism. She then shows a comic depicting a man being x-rayed and examined with magnifying glass and camera wielding people, and a tree of flatscreen monitors with a lasso representing HFS.

Variables for her study included level of participation online, privacy concerns, online trust, self-disclosure, etc. which were hypothesized to affect both attitude and behavior positively except for privacy concerns. Gender and education were both hypothesized to impact upon attitude and behavior. The median age for the mostly university and above students was around 21 years old. Using statistical methods, the following results were found:

The more students participated, the more they approved of HFS.

Students with a more open privacy attitude approved more of HFS.

Female students participated less.

The more higher education, the less likely they were to participate.

Her conclusions included that education deserves more attention, junior college students had unpredictable attitudes while higher level students had more consistency. Lu argues it is a rational issue, so education helps people avoid it since HFS features irrational behavior – to wit, individuals who disapprove of HFS will participate anyway, enabled by anonymity. The study, however, featured twice as many females as males and maybe skewed, and further study ought to include interviews.

dominant culture vs grassroot culture.

general questions:

1. the driver of the grassroot net culture. market failures? fans group whose desired content is not in the market, citizen journalism that focuses on local news that are not available in the media market. perceived rights to authentic media products?

2. how do they influence political and legal forces?

Bingchun: it has to do with gov’s regulaiton and censorship as well. e.g., cctv 8 censored the original content of deperate housewives. perception of authentity and the rights to the autentic content. the users made fun of the olympics ceremony about the dubbing. the users consider their translation much better than the state broadcaster.

Jiang: it is hard to say that grassroot culture can bring social changes. shanzhai spring festival gala sucessfully negotiated with guizhou tv channle to broadcast it. gov implicitly gave the order that no report on shanzhai. but this policy has been changed during the party conferences. the gov official indicated that if shanzhai is creative and has the “chinese charaters of socialism”, it should be protected. shanzhai culture has grown up to influence the gov. so he tends to believe that shanzhai can bring changes to the quanshi situation.

Xin: pessimistic view of CJ on its impact on China. when looking at political control and the commercial power, they jointly shut down diverse opinions.

a coherent flow – yesterday macro-level big picture; today micro-level analyses more at the civil or civic level.

pilot study of a bigger scale research. clarifications: 1. emule is really an representative term to refer to a large number of p2p file sharing sites; 2. focuses on subtitles groups in the file sharing community.

why study it? how ict contributes to the decentralized form of media production and consumption. one particular form is p2p file sharing. such file sharing is illegal coz it violates copyright law. she wants to question coping with the new comm spaces using established institutions (laws and regulations).

trading digital products as commodified objects? the main question is what is the context contributes to the formation of these groups? why do ppl want to contribute? what are the mechanisms to coordinate the cooperation and keep the quality? what is the insight these groups can provide to ICTs in china.

method: filedwork in April 2009.

refers to jack’s comments about not taking china too seriously.

analytical framework: western theories and their applicability in china. henry jenkins on convergence culture. http://www.amazon.com/Convergence-Culture-Where-Media-Collide/dp/0814742815
benkler’s the wealth of network. http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Networks-Production-Transforms-Markets/dp/0300125771/ref=pd_sim_b_3

findings: 1. why this becomes popular? the state-controlled media do not satisfy the needs. audience’s demand is important motives. personal interest such as fans of american dramas or foreign movies is another reason. 2. the extent of coordination among the groups. there are three or four major subtitle groups. there is fierce competition among them for recognition or reputation, not for material gains. e.g., within each group, there are three to four subgroups. one is responsible for moving the content from the servers, one for translation, etc. within the translation group, there are even divisions of languages such as english and korean. still another group is in charge of sychnronizing subtiltes and videos. a final group on disseminating the subtitles to forums and online spaces. 3. the incentives of the volunteer participation. non-material incentives beomce prominent in cyberspace. it challenges the bases of copyright law and the right it protects, which are often material-related.

conclusion – implications of this study. 1. quesionts the traditional notion of copyright 2. alternative mechanism of media production and distribution (non-state, non-commercial) 3. community with weak ties and interest-oriented communities. the volunteers do not know each other in most cases. but the weak ties indeed are able to mobilize collective efforts and to coordinate with each other.

Quan = Power, Shi = ? maybe a bit like the influence of power, Shanzhai = copycat knock-off

we are limited by the visions and the datasets when it comes to internet research.

he shows the pictures of the shanzhai phenomenon such as double ms that look very simliar to mcdonald’s m. pizzahut to pizzahuff. all kinds of replications of bird nets. netizens make shanzhai lecture to pk cctv. shanzhai version of cdream of red mansions.

the climax to shanzhai culture: shanzhai spring festival evening gala. www.ccstv.net

responses to it: Ni Ping, the former anchor of Spring Festival Gala, absolutely boycotts the shanzhai culture. Director Zhang Yimou wants to leave it alone. Han Han, the famous blogger, thinks no shangzhai, no new china coz everything was copied from other countries. Yin Hong, a scholar, said only elite and modern culture should be the mainstream.

Jiang’s point of view – the event itself is an etertainment event among netizens. it is a chinese robinhood. it is an adult ceremony for chinese netizens. there should be a conexistance of both shanzhai and mainstream culture.

the relationship beween quan and shi in china should be examined against the chinese culture. The seal as the sign of power in history. shi means treatments one accpeted once the person got the quan. the shift of quan and shi in china. gov has quan whereas netizens have shi. if the gov can win the support from the netizens, it will have both quan and shi.

conclusion – shanzhai culture is inevitable. the idea of quan and shi is necessary to under cyber culture in china.

during the olympics, the control over internet was loosened. the function of web 2.0 in empowering political activists should not be over-stated. this paper shows CJ functions as an alternative to MJ. Both CJ and MJ may fail in challenging chinese info control. Case study is used in this paper.

Case 1: Zuola Zhou and his blog. CJ is an important source to the MJ. CJ plays a watchdog role however it is far from challenging or changing the state.

Case 2: CJ as an alternative medium to distribution info by MJ journalists. 2008 Shangxi event. 1. the boundary between CJ and MJ is not clear-cut 2. the fudemental approach to reporting the events in china does not change – draw attention from central gov to publish the bad guys at the lower level, rather than criticizing the whole system

Case 3: the milk scandal. both CJ and MJ fail to inform citizens about the event.

Q: What do you think about the difference between the theories of collective action in the context of virtual communities? 

WZ: No words in one definition of conceptualization refer to agency or consciousness – so that what we normally understand about collective action is that it is about achieving some sort of collective end. So Weiyu points to an idea of “collective intelligent design,” and how SNS can have mechanisms that suggest relevant content users. 

Q: For Weiyu: One could argue that all social networks are about relationships. Lam: where did you do your fieldwork and what were your implements? Read more…