global voices, one world

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.

HU Yong, 眾生喧嘩 (The Rising Cacophony: Personal Expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age), Peking University

the book is written in chinese. about the book title, he thought for a long time for the translation. he used the term, Cacophony, in a positive way. three meanings of this word. in china, internet emabled informed citizens. but in a lot of circumstances, you dont know there is a society. e.g., tangshan earthquake and sars. the appearance of informed citizens is thus a big breakthrough. mass media as the first channel, neican from xinhua news agency as the third channel, letters and visits as the forth channel. internet ecourages the formation of public opinion. internet makes freedom of assembly and association possilbe in china (they are extremely rare in china). such as fans groups and gathering of signitures. internet is not an expressing medium but also an organizing medium. there are two chinas, online and offline, real and virtual. online china is not exactly representation of offline china but it is more true. the true dimensions of china is only reviewed in virtual china. internet becomes a public opinion tool subject to control by various interest groups who have different agendas. a garden becomes a jungle. a war of public opinion is seen online. public opinion in cyberspace is officialy incorporated into the party system, which is good news. e.g., President Hu visited renming net and made a speech. internet breaks down the barrier bt citizens and officials.

four mechanisms – posts replicated on the net, snowball effect; controversial topics and heartbreaking stories catch attention; langauge itself, net speak; …

conclusion – china’s public sphere is established onlne. internet is less regulated than the traditional media. it will certainly help to develop civil society.

YANG Guobin, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, Columbia University

the book is scheduled to officially publish in 2 weeks. inspiration goes to many of the colleagues. yang will read a few passages in the book.

introduction chapter: two misleading images of china internet – control and entertainment. internet-related struggles that is called online activism. a world of carnival, community and contentions. this book is about ppl’s power in the internet age. why is popular contention growing under increased internet control? what cultural forms does online acitivity take? what is the power of online activism as a force of social change?

chapter 7 on online community: utopian realism from anthony giddens. how to understand modernity in an dystopian age. 3 popular images with online communities – image of square, openness; image of home, solidarity; image of martial arts. rivers and lakes refer to a world away from the established social and political world. the heros in this world seek for justice. xia, knight warrior, has been an important part of pop culture. this chapter argues that chinese ppl impose their imagination to the online communities. this imagination has been long embedded in the history. it serves as a critique to the reality.

Jack QIU, Working-class network society: Communication technology and the information have-less in urban China, Chinese University of Hong Kong

first book panel in the circ series. a forth book on chinese telecomm and revolution came up this year too. worked since 2002. 2003 was the first circ. many of the content in the book was presented in circ series. this book grew up along circ.

will show pictures coz internet means dif things for dif ppl. lots of working class, or the info-have-less, are very dif from maoist proletarians and those british working class. the new working class in 21st century. working class is silent online but they are making the tech equipments, they are pursuing a more democratic society.

structure of the book – part i networks materialized, tech diffusion, internet cafe, wireless tech; part ii have-less ppl, not fully class-conscious, most of whom are migrants, the young and the old working class, child labor; part iii class formation, space clustering, classic events.

demonstates a map of this book.

Monroe Price’s comments - market for loyalty. gov plays as a manopoly in the market. we have seen here the efforts to enter the market. altering the structure of the market is what we have seen here. carnation, contest and conquest in katz and dynan’s book media events. geopolitical interaction and china’s intervention in other spaces such as africa.

Q&A

Q1 – how about cultures? Jack – entertainment is among the most important things. working class chinese are so bored that they spend tons of time on online activity such as qq. but the entertainment need is not fulfilled by mainstream media such as cctv. entertainment can serve as a gateway or the alternative tool for creativity. e.g., qq as entertainment and later turned into a social and political mobilization tool later. Yang – much of the internet culture is entertainment. but the social aspect about entertainment is oftne ignored. game communities are also about society. he tries to link the political to other aspects including culture. gamers also have to face censorship.

Q2 – connection bt gamine and other online communities. pseudo real china? Yang – the formation of new identity. Li Yonggang mentioned after sichuan earthquake, games use games to operate relief efforts.

Q3 – rivers and lakes are all about repurtation. Yang – yes, about honor and bravery. online comunity members use langauge to construct certain events. e.g., tianya event of a young girl seeking to save her mother via selling herself. netizens went to her city to verify this case. as soon as one is recognized as xia, he has to follow the rules of containing the honor.

Done!

Delli Carpini Q1 – Jiang Min and Sarah to respond to each other. two different pictures?

Q2 – what would take to have a systematic and more institutionlized mechanism to use the internet as freedom tools?

Q3 – Civil spaces including NGOs and SNSs, how do they involve public into collective acction?

Q4 – Yuan Le’s study. call for social change within the gov framework? awareness of political issues shown in the forums?

Hongmei Li Q5 – commercial influence on internet use in china?

Monroe Price Q6 – whether the circumstance suggests the internet is different from the press? what is the cultural and political implication of the results to put china into this non-free category, considering countries have no access so no control?

Q7 – sentences of bloggers in china? they are not jailed because of blogging but coz they are already dissidents. the left-right division? too simple categorization.

Jiang Min – deliberation defintions are different. how ppl talk about public issues in such spaces. not about decision-making. chinese ppl increasingly have economic and cultural freedom. but politically it could be quite difficult. having more debate itself is great.

Sarah – not too different. more focusing on another element. there are vivid discussions but also limitations. translating online discussion into offline mobilization is what they try to see now. malaysia is doing this coz they have less strict control over the internet. and ppl were sentenced for online activities. maybe not to say bloggers. and how to weight the obstacles to access vs content control? from a political org perspective, they weigh censorship a bit more. compared to turkey, chinese censorhip is more effective. the issue of censorship itself is sencored that ppl dont know how to go around the censorship, which is a public info in turkey.

Yuan – Left-right discourse is a new wave of cultural revolution. it might be a bit distant from young generations. but we see increasingly such discourse onine. political orientation or ideologies to support their psychological needs? they dont know exactly what left and right means. but they still lable others and use them an attack on oppponents. so the left-right lables are often seen online. this classification is useful to study such labeling behaviors at least.

Jiang Min – no press freedom in china coz nobody was allowed to have press. that could be one indicator of press freedom. collecitve action might be difficult in china if it is only political. but other types of collective action are actually welcomed by the gov such as the relief help during earthquake.

a nice exchange of opinions bt jiang and sarah.

Prof Cappella has worked on the deliberation projects for more than 10 years. A US-oriented perspective.

1. quite heavy usage of ICTs for social and political purpose in china. infrastructure allows it. there is a developing trend that is oriented to particular ideologies and views. cross-space, cross- bbs differences. the diversity is under control though. the diversity is thus un-representative. offline, off-record, coded way to express opinions. – what are the next set of qs? builkalization ppl with similar minds to go to similar websites. what are the consequences of this with regard to changing opinions, political participation, and govnance? how effective are the limits and the tricks to get around this?

2. self-selection to congenial and uncongenial sites. internet is niche-oriented by partisan lines in the us. talia jomini’s dissertation on partisan selective exposure to info.

3. if ppl choose uncongenial media, would they find the info unacceptable to them? individual bias towards disagreeing videos. lauren feldman’s dissertation on exposure to opinionated media content.

4. vince price and cappella’s deliberation study. ppl’s own opinions become more sophisticated after deliberation, more knowledgable about others’ opinions.

5. what are the macro-mechanisms that keep diversity away from the public dialogue? how the limitation is effective in restricting opinion expression.

Jack Qiu mentiones that CIRC’s first session is often macro-scope.

Sarah presents 15 countries not just china.

2007-2008 research period.

questions: what are the main threats to internent and digitla media freedom today? techs used by gov to control. is china less free?

internet and mobile phones are both considered. gov and non-gov actors are included. 19 indicators and 3 thematic categories were made up – obstacles to access, infrastructure and policy; limits on content, censorship; violations of users rights, legal environment such as privacy.

what found – paradox is that growing access while growing threats.

key finding in china – penetration doubled in last two years but also sophistiacted and multi-layered control apparatus. 78 out of 100 on the score, higher score worse freedom, not free. strong performance on access, hight interference with content, signiciant violation of users rights.

china in comparison – cuba worst because of bad access.

highlighted examples – strong infrastructure but gov-imposed network and regulatory restrictions; compared to brazil, egypt, malaysia vs. india and south africa.

multi-layered censorship: tech filtering, prepublication, postpublication, proactive manipulation. – detail and sophistication of directives; 50 cents party, paid by gov to post pro-gov opinions online (russia and tunisia are doing this too).

sentences in china were longest although 1 of 6 countries does sentence blogger. three years to ten years.

pushback factors – some circumvention, incredible dynamism, public vs. hidden/offline, comparision to cuba where conversations are within the intranet emails.

internet vs. press freedom – there is a differentiation. for the non-free countries, the difference is very small. in the partly free countries such as turkey, malaysia and russia, the difference is bigger. (interesting findings!)

closing thought – more likely tha not that chinese authorities will continue to actively contest the unfettered use of the internet. how can defenders of internet freedom ensure the forces for openness prevail over the controllers – in china and beyond?

Authors are from Peiking U.

backgrounds: bbs forums allow for political discussions in china. two year long observation shows that bbs content is sensitive to online ideological gorups (many labels to attach to others such as shit left, cynical right). in addition, reflections on historiacal events are found online.

RQ: does the left-right combat still influence or dominate current online political discussion?

LR: what is ideology? what is political ideology?

Evolution of chinese left-right: late Qing – marxism vs. american progressism; civil war – socialism vs. capitalis;now – old left, new left, confusianism, and nationalism.

debates between the ideological camps – nationalism vs. minority ethnicity for example.

Classification of online political groups – Yuan presents a comprehensive map. Strong opposition against gov is considered as radical.

is there any political forum dominated by left or right rhetorics? do they have different agenda?

method – content analysis of 2 bbs forums (qiangguo forum and maoyan kanren forum), qiangguo is sponsored by renming daily and maoyan is more commercial. multi-stage cluster sampling with 394 threads and 1243 replieds. intercoder reliability was obtained.

Political orientation variable – radical left, moderate left, middle, moderate right, radical right.

results – left voices dominate qiangguo forum whereas right voices dominate maoyan. there do exist the left-right distinctions. different agendas are found in two dif forums. national policy ranked high in qiangguo, moayan prefers individual freedom and democracy issues.

polorization of online political groups exists in chinese internetl. the ideological debate has to relate to current social change.

conclusion – does the division reflect individual and group differences in interests? they are important issues when transforming online public space to online public sphere.

Prof Jiang proposed the concept of “authoritarian deliberation” in last year’s CIRC and the concept has received much attention so far. We’d like to hear about her most recent research along this line.

Jiang worked for CCTV, China Radio International etc. The practical experience helped her to think about Chinese mass media. The question she tries to answer is “what is Chinese Internet”. Framings: 1. self-containing system that is censored by govn, which leads to protests against the censorship; 2. increasingly talk about civil society and public sphere, which are likely to emerge. She thinks Chinese internet may be sth in between. A better frame is to look at it as a different type of spaces.

She presents stats about Chinese Internet. 298 million internet users, 2/3 under 30, more than half of users are bloggers, 117 million mobile phone internet users, 700 mobile phone users.

Myths about censorship: great firewall is brought down then china will be free; under-represented internet population; Chinese leadership equals dictatorship.

“we Chinese need to be controlled?” – a case. Jackie Chen, the kung fu star, made a public quote that we Chinese need to be controlled. he blamed media for mis-quote. netizens demand him to be sent to north korea. Han Han, a famous blogger, criticized that he can read the emperor’s mind from jackie.

How does the Chinese government control people? Modern authoritarianism is deliberative in China. Patriotism + legitimacy is based on performance.

spaces of authoritarian deliberation (original from baogang he from Australia): 1 central propaganda spaces – gov websites, disclosure of info, online comm channels, law and enforcement, letters and visits (complaints against local govs), gov sponsored forums – gov is aware of the need to listen to ppl and guide public opinion. Deng Yujiao event.

2. gov-regulated commercial spaces – sina.com, tudou.com, tencent sms service, tianya forum. different techs of controlling. search engine tech to censor. fifty-cents party. fatianxia.com bullog.com closed down and reopened overseas. Liu Xiaoyuan’s blog.

3. Emergent civic space – Jet Lee’s fund-raising foundations. civic organizations. think tank groups such as transition institute and constitution initiatives. gov controls this space by registration regulation. bloggers need to register if you need ur own domain name. civic issues online. commercial sites such as xiaonei.com afford civic activities too.

international deliberative spaces – gov PR sites, immigrants sites such as mitbbs.com, EastSouthWestNorth.com, danwei.com, global voices and so on. translating foreign content into Chinese. economics magazine and desperate housewives for example.

future research – should we engage reform-minded bureaucrats? how to grow emergent civil society? patterns of online info sharing, civic discourse, and collective action? how to engage the young ppl who are the majority of internet users? what is the implication for authoritarian deliberation?