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.

Jiang Li wants to shift our focus to what Chinese people are doing with the Internet. In her study, she argued that Chinese diaspora web site is a combination of mass media and interpersonal media. To the best of our knowledge, however, there are very few studies of the use and effects of Chinese diaspora websites; the studies that do fail to look at first-generation immigrants, who are the primary users of the web sites.

Jiang pulls us back to 1995 and Robert Putnam’s displacement theory, that media use actually leads to the decline of social capital. This approach, though, has been challenged for its narrow focus due to a number of reasons – empirical results aren’t consistent; Putnam used a simple measure of Internet use; individual differences were overlooked.

With this in mind, Jiang tells us that the research objectives of the study was to understand the motives that drive the use of Chinese diaspora websites.  The study posited that the different motives for using Chinese diaspora websites are associated with different community participations based on (1) attitudes and (2) behaviors.

Read more…

We’re on break now, but will soon be hearing from Panel 2:  

• HU Fan, Hong Kong Baptist University, JIANG Li, Cornell University & WANG Ning, Hong Kong Baptist University
• Sunny S.K. LAM, The Chinese University of Hong Kong 
• Weiyu ZHANG, National University of Singapore 
• Respondent: Michael DELLI CARPINI, University of Pennsylvania 
• Moderator: Peter YU, Drake University

Liveblogging to follow.  Once again, you can continue to watch the webcast live, among other ways of staying connected with the conference’s proceedings. Full biographies of panelists are available here.

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!

Lei Zhang discusses Yeeyan, the largest social translation community on the Internet that he co-founded. The Yeeyan community translates more than 150 articles on daily basis, ranges from news stories, opinions, to scientific papers, from various languages into Chinese.

What is the kind of content of the Internet in China?  According to Wikipedia, more than 80% of web contents are in English (German follows in 4.5% and Japanese 3.1%).  LZ highly doubts the accuracy of these numbers, but still remarks that it points out the dominance of certain languages in the Internet world.  To answer this question, LZ ran queries in search engines and examines the languages of the query results.  ”Breast cancer” in English results in 38 million returns, but only 6 million in Chinese.  So there is a huge amount of content that needs to be translated into Chinese, but machine translations are inadequate to solve this language barrier problem.  

Yeeyan is a community translation approach to this problem; it is essentially a “Wikipedia for translation,” with over 40,000 translations, 8,000 translators, and 80,000 members.  LZ saw a problem of understanding divide, e.g. issues in 2008 on Tibet and nationalism, or conservatism in economic policy (which, in China, in fact means supporting anti-free market).  Translation is not a full solution, but a necessary first step in bridging the understanding divide.

The Guardian Chinese Edition is another Yeeyan project powered by community translation.

Tor is a free software that you can use to connect to other sites on the network, even if the network doesn’t want you to.  It comes with a specification and full documentation.

Tor has about 1500 volunteers to serve as active “Tor relays,” allowing others to reroute their traffic through these volunteers.  There are about 200,000+ active users with >1 Gbit/s, and funding from the US Dept. of Defense, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Voice of America, Human Rights Watch, Google, and NLnet. 

Tor deals with “anonymity,” “privacy,” “network security,” and “reachability,” serving different interests for different user groups (government, private citizens, businesses, and blocked users). Few circumvention tools provide privacy, security, and anonymity in addition to circumvention; “circumvention” here addresses Internet filtering (as opposed to Rebecca MacKinnon’s concerns about web site censorship). RD will focus on these functionalities that Tor provides.

The goal for Tor is to distribute the relays over multiple hops, decentralizing trust so that no one intermediate hop knows who is talking to who over a sustained connection.  Tor provides three anonymity properties: (1) a LAN attacker can’t learn or influence your destination (useful for blocking resistance); (2) no single router can link you to your destination (no signing up relays to trace users); and (3) the destination can’t learn of your location (so they can’t reveal you or treat you differently).  

Tor can’t solve all problems, but it is sustainable: it is based on a community of volunteers and developers and on an open design.  Using Tor in oppressed areas – RD claims that as the firewall starts cracking down more and more, there will in fact be more Tor users who will be more “ordinary” people to be able to do what they used to do.

Another note: publicity attracts attention – the publicity attracted by censors threaten the impression of control by censors, which is arguably as, if not more, important to censors than the actual control.  We therefore control the pace of the arms race–we are not “doing against China,” but instead writing software to allow others to use for their own purposes.

Next steps: Tell the right people, keep working on the details.  Again, technical solutions will not solve the whole censorship problem (especially in countries where firewalls are socially very successful).  But a strong technical solution is still a critical piece of the puzzle.

RF: Will frame the study.  Visualizes a first-generation 3D rotating map of the Chinese blogosphere.

JK: Visualizes social network diagrams of 12 different languages.  Some visual representations of languages (for Russia)–represented by concentrated, polarized areas of color–are platform-specific; others (for Arabic, Persian) are much more distributed.  

The Chinese blogosphere is a mix: it is concentrated in some areas (i.e. it is still platform-specific) but over a spread of “trading zones” (e.g. business bloggers, patriotic bloggers, bloggers based on Sohu.com or ycool.com).  Different cuts of the visualization can be via layers of traditional or simplified characters. Cluster focus index graphs show how proportionately terms are used in a given cluster relative to everyone else. The visualization also shows links and tags (e.g. tags for technology, social, news, and politics). 

Larger zones are in business and culture; interestingly, in one side are pro-state bloggers, but on the other side are overseas communities.  In the middle are critical discourse–those are the ones that get blocked.