global voices, one world

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.