Guobin Yang, ed., China’s Contested Internet

Excerpt

China’s Contested Internet edited by Guobin Yang presents a wide-ranging selection of works on the study of the Internet in China from the pre-Weibo period through the Weibo era. The volume consists of ten chapters, covering diverse topics that characterize the distinct “Chinese Internet” (p1). These topics include not only long-standing issues such as censorship (ch1), Internet-empowered political participation and activism (ch3, ch4, ch9, ch10), power relations between key actors – users, commercial service providers, and government (ch2, ch7, ch8), but also issues that have not been adequately examined, such as online racism and Chinese nationality (ch5), and popular online subculture in the case of the “diaosi” meme (ch6). Various conceptual frameworks are employed to analyze these phenomena by contributors from comparative literature, communication, political science, anthropology and sociology. In this sense, this volume can be regarded as an interdisciplinary effort. …