![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This article pursues a context-rich understanding of how digital media offer unique opportunities for citizens residing in mainland China to participate in civic engagement and organize their civic values. While the Chinese state authority keeps a heavy hand in any form of media, old or new, for use of overt political expressions, I provide empirical demonstration of the link between entertainment media experiences and the exchange on more serious civic topics. In doing so, I argue for a more expanded notion of civic engagement for political environments such as China and develop an empirical scheme that incorporates ordinary citizens' interactions with more leisure-oriented media texts. Such theoretical and empirical moves, as I point out, can contribute to a more thoughtful discussion of the Internet and civic engagement in China. Furthermore, this article pays particular attention to how the Internet provides a valuable channel for community formation among ordinary Chinese citizens outside the mainstream media, which are mostly occupied by state elites. My examination suggests that the Internet helps online discussants reach further depth in their extension from entertainment discussion to constructing serious discourses on important social issues, more so than the mainstream newspapers.
Notes on contributor
Dr Jingsi Christina Wu is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Hofstra University. She received her PhD from the joint programme of Sociology and Communication at SUNY Albany, where her dissertation won the University Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award. Her primary research areas include popular culture and politics, human interactions in new media environments, and global media. She teaches and publishes about both the Western media and Chinese media.
Notes
1. One of the earliest and most publicized cases in China was in 2006 when a woman posted a series of pictures online in which she abused kittens with her high heels and tapped into online groups who are into such graphics. However, it also offended many other online users who are advocates of animal rights. With individual contributions of knowledge about details in the pictures, such as the appearance of the woman and the background setting of the pictures, the netizens were able to uncover her offline identity in 6 days and shared such information both online and with the police, which led to wider criticism of her behaviour.
2. All excerpts in this article were directly translated from Chinese into English as closely as possible by the author.
3. All examples of online posts come from the 39 discussion threads sampled for this study.
4. ‘PK’ is borrowed from video game language, meaning two contestants on the bottom of the contest would face off in one last round, after which the winning contestant would continue on the show while the losing one left. The Super Girl temporary PK stage is where contestants on the bottom waited before all rounds of competition were completed and the two with lowest scores went through the PK round.
5. Shen is a judge on the show, while He is one of the hosts.