Citizens, governance and social media in China: evolving socio-cultural, economic and political dimensions
Date
2016
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The mainstream academic attention looking at citizen’s use of social media in China is focusing on the discourse of using social media to challenge authoritarian governments. Looking at China only in this Western perspective, however, is misleading and this analysis tries to reconceptualize the study of social media use in China from a bottom up perspective. It examines how citizen creation, distribution, and receipt of information through social media enhance their ability to interact spontaneously and collectively in both cyber and terrestrial space in ways that increase their influence within the socio-cultural and economic as well as political dimensions.
The conceptual framework set up here includes two main components, social media infrastructure and citizen interaction, respectively. Social media infrastructure identifies the variety of and nature and effect of social media use produced by citizens and the technology itself. The citizen-related social media infrastructure includes Code Language, Human Flesh Search Engine, Surrounding Gaze, Citizen Anti-Control Strategies and Cumulative Effects of Specific Events over Time. The technology-related Social Media Infrastructure includes Time-Space Effects, Cybersphere and Terrestrial Linkages, and Technological Changes.
The citizen interaction dimension examines how the expansion of social media use and social media infrastructure change the interaction patterns between citizens and citizens, between citizens and private actors, and between citizens and governments. These changes and characteristics of these new interaction patterns have been presented through a series of case studies. In the social-cultural dimension, citizens effectively make use of social media to fight what they view as social immorality, to generate and share information that is important to their lives, and to provide social good when governments inadequately respond. In the economic dimension, it changes the interaction between consumers and sellers or producers, especially in consumer self-protection by using social media; and the influence of bottom-up use of social media on the relationship between workers and employers. In the political dimension, citizens making use of social media to protest against officials’ misfeasance and corruption and what are viewed as governmental irresponsible decisions have effectively held the government accountable in a number of cases. In addition, the cat-and-mouse relationship between the government’s censorship and netizens’ anti-control strategies on social media platforms has been identified. It shows that netizens have the ability to devise innovative strategies to resist and overcome some of the governments’ control efforts.
Furthermore, by adding the time factor, the study also explores the complexity of cumulative effects. Four analyses, including cumulative changes in the technology relevant to social media and when and where it can be used by citizens, institutional reform of the railways system, charity operation change triggered by the scandal of Red Cross and the overall cumulative effects on the central government’s role and position, demonstrate that cumulative effects generated from technological and spatial aspects of social media and netizens’ can be collectively involved in a number of relevant individual cases over time.
As a whole, the study supports the viewpoint that the Chinese experience does not fit with the general literature on social media and authoritarian regimes. Moreover, the study finds that, without seeking regime change, expansions have occurred and are growing in the ability of citizens, over the vast space of China, to act collectively and quickly using social media to exercise influence from bottom up in different sectors.
Finally, the reconceptualized analytic framework developed for this study can be applied in comparative research among nations to generate more adequate understanding of the extent to which citizens have or have not enhanced their influence from the bottom up in multiple sectors of governance, not just in relation to the formal state. This will be discussed in the concluding chapter.