China’s Emerging Inter-network Society - The Rise of Public Advocacy in the Digital ‘Public Sphere’
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2019
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
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Looking beyond western philosophical foundations and classical concepts of civil society, a major hypothesis of this dissertation is the rise of rights-based advocacy for “Dao” (倡道) empowered by the digital public sphere, which multiplies the opportunities for dialogues and negotiations with the state, and may even constitute an incipient counter-power in engagement of the interest-based advocacy with Party’s guidance (倡导). It also put forward that China has an emerging “Inter-network society” which is a “network society” with increasing interaction and inter-subjectivity, as an arena for deliberative communication and action that a new form of civil society emerging through the development of interactive, horizontal networks of communication over the Internet and other digital models. It links the analyses of the outstanding issues of public interest advocacy under the impact of the age of information with empirical approaches to understand the role of civil society in building an active public sphere (including the virtual public sphere on line) during China’s post-reform era. Based on a selected body of comparative literature, case studies and other examples undertaken in China, it argues that the Internet has become the new ‘social space /public sphere’ where power and counter-power are competing. Under these conditions, the insurgent political and social movements are able to intervene more decisively in the new communication space. Meanwhile, the corporate media and mainstream politics also have invested in this new communication space. As a result of these processes, mass media and horizontal communication networks are converging. The net outcome of this evolution is a historical shift of the public sphere from the institutional realm to the new communication space. The conclusions are supported by observations about the ever-shifting connections between the civil society’s increasing participation in policy-making process and social change in today’s China. It employs extensive reading of news reports and case study analyses to investigate the Inter-network society’s participation in public interest advocacy. The arguments are based on detailed case studies on issues of philanthropy, environmental protection, copy rights and collective land usage. The dissertation then discusses the political implications and future scenarios raised by these issues under the influence of an emerging Inter-network society.
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Online social networks, Civil society, Public sphere, Social advocacy
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China
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