As the second volume of a two-volume set on new media users in China, this book approaches the subject from a micro level. examining the mediatized existence and life of new media users in the digital age and the approaching age of artificial intelligence. To further explore the interaction between people and new media, this volume focuses on the idea of the "mediatized survival" of new media users. By analyzing user behaviour and practice in mediatized time and space, including selfies, photo retouching, memes, online videos, social media posts, video conferences, and WeChat red packets, the author elucidates the mediatized self-expression embodied in these key phenomena and shows how reality and virtual life converge and interact. The final two chapters discuss drivers of new forms of mediatization surrounding data and cyborgs, exploring the impact of algorithms on people and the outlook for human-machine relationships. This title will be a must-read for scholars, students and media professionals interested in the topics of internet communication, new media usage and media and society as a whole.

Introducing the concept of state-sponsored platformization, this volume shows the complexity behind the central role the party-state plays in shaping social media platforms. The party-state increasingly penetrates commercial social media while aspiring to turn its own media agencies into platforms. Yet state-sponsored platformization does not necessarily produce the Chinese Communist Party’s desired outcomes. Citizens continue to appropriate social media for creative public engagement at the same time that more people are managing their online settings to reduce or refuse connection, inducing new forms of crafted resistance to hyper-social media connectivity. The wide-ranging essays presented here explore the mobile radio service Ximalaya.FM, Alibaba’s evolution into a multi-platform ecosystem, livestreaming platforms in the United States and China, the role of Twitter in Trump’s North Korea diplomacy, user-generated content in the news media, the emergence of new social agents mediating between state and society, social media art projects, Chinese and US scientists’ use of social media, and reluctance to engage with WeChat. Ultimately, readers will find that the ten chapters in this volume contribute significant new research and insights to the fast-growing scholarship on social media in China at a time when online communication is increasingly constrained by international struggles over political control and privacy issues.

China in the Era of Social Media discusses how social media is changing the world in an unprecedented way through speed, scope, and depth. In the last decade or so, social media in China has witnessed the most explosive growth in the world. Being the most populous nation in the world, it has the most social media users in the world as well. This book examines the current situation and unique characteristics of Chinese social media, the significance of social media in the country’s social transformation, and particularly its influences on political change in the nation. The main goal of this book is to explore how social media has been affecting and thus changing China’s political system, the ruling communist ideology, and the state-run media, as well as its public discourse and public opinions. Scholars of Asian studies, political science, and communications will find this book particularly interesting.

Life outside the mobile phone is unbearable.’ Lily, 19, factory worker. Described as the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Xinyuan Wang spent 15 months living among a community of these migrants in a small factory town in southeast China to track their use of social media. It was here she witnessed a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise ‘homeless’. Wang’s fascinating study explores the full range of preconceptions commonly held about Chinese people – their relationship with education, with family, with politics, with ‘home’ – and argues why, for this vast population, it is time to reassess what we think we know about contemporary China and the evolving role of social media.

The Internet and social media are pervasive and transformative forces in contemporary China. The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China explores the changing relationship between China's Internet and social media and its society, politics, legal system, and foreign relations.

As the first volume of a two-volume set on new media users in China, this book approaches the subject from a macro level by regarding users as constructive nodes within networks, thereby giving insights into the interaction between users and new media and among individuals within the ambit of new media. The author revisits the roles of the typical new media user that has changed from that of a passive "audience member" to a basic unit of the network itself, acting as both a node in the communication network, social network, and service network and also a link between the three. In viewing users as nodes functioning in communication networks and social networks, this volume unravels the new landscapes of communication of the new media era and the consequent profound changes in social relationships, interpersonal connection modes and different methods of interaction. In terms of their role in service networks resting upon the network economy, new media users not only are consumers with personalized needs, but also serve as service guides, resource contributors, and even major productive forces. This title will be a must-read for scholars, students and media professionals interested in the topics of internet communication, new media usage, and media and society as a whole.

Starting from a history of new media, this book presents the development of network technology and media applications in China, while also examining the relationship between new media and politics, economy, culture, lifestyle, traditional media, law, knowledge, etc. As of 2014, China had been connected to the Internet for 20 years. During those two decades, China has witnessed drastic changes, from its national makeup to people’s daily lives. The book analyzes the changes in China brought about by the new media on the basis of large-scale data. Further, through comparisons with international trends in new media development, it seeks to clarify the new media development in China and comprehensively demonstrate the revolution and brand-new faces of Chinese society over the past two decades in the wake of new media. As such, it outlines the bright future of new media by revisiting and summarizing the developmental courses of new media and Chinese society.