Mobilized by Mobile Media. How Chinese People Use Mobile Phones to Change Politics and Democracy Liu Jun
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Mobilized by Mobile Media. How Chinese People use mobile phones to change politics and democracy Liu Jun To cite this version: Liu Jun. Mobilized by Mobile Media. How Chinese People use mobile phones to change politics and democracy. Social Anthropology and ethnology. University of Copenhagen. Faculty of Humanities, 2013. English. tel-00797157 HAL Id: tel-00797157 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00797157 Submitted on 5 Mar 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. MOBILIZED BY MOBILE MEDIA HOW CHINESE PEOPLE USE MOBILE PHONES TO CHANGE POLITICS AND DEMOCRACY Jun Liu A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Faculty of Humanities University of Copenhagen August 2012 ACKNOWLEDGES First, I owe an unquantifiable debt to my dear wife, Hui Zhao, and my loving parents for their enduring support, trust, and encouragement for my study and research. Their unquestioning belief in my ability to complete my study was often the only inspiration and motivation I needed to keep me from succumbing to feelings of inadequacy and ineptitude. Second, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to Professor Klaus Bruhn Jensen, my supervisor. I have been very fortunate for having had Klaus as my mentor. And I cannot thank him enough for his patience, insights, encouragement, guidance, as well as the freedom to think he gave me during my PhD study. The invaluable assistance and unstinted guidance of him were essential for me to complete this study. I wish to say a heartfelt “thank you” to him. Third, I gratefully acknowledge to all my friends and colleagues in Denmark, including, but not limited to, Rasmus Helles, Kjetil Sandvik, Stine Lomborg, Christine Von Seelen Schou, Andreas Lindegaard Gregersen, András Szabó, and Casper Høeg Radil. I feel lucky to have been working with them and constantly getting inspired by their thoughts. Special thanks is given to Poul Erik Nielsen, Aarhus University, for giving valuable comments at my proposal stage and taking time to discuss with me through Skype when I was in China; to Anne Mette Thorhauge for giving me concrete and insightful comments on the part of “the Communication Have-nots”; to Professor Rich Ling, IT University of Copenhagen, who is also one of my dissertation committee members, for giving me suggestions on the part of “ guanxi -embedded mobile social network”; to Toke Nordbo from the PhD school at the Faculty of Humanities for providing constant support throughout the course of my study. I also cherish the life with my Chinese friends, including Wenjing Cai, Zhida Luo, Meng Zhao, Xiaowei Gui, and Xianwen Kuang, in Denmark. Fourth, I want to thank from the bottom of my heart all the interviewees, my former classmates, colleagues, and students in China. Without their support I would have never accomplished this research. Last but not least, this research was supported primarily by funds provided by the Faculty of Humanities and carried out at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication in University of Copenhagen. I am indebted to both the Faculty of Humanities and the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication for the opportunity they gave me to conduct independent research. CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION: THE EMERGENCE OF MOBILE COMMUNICATION IN CHINESE POLITICS .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 THE DEFIANT DEMONSTRATION: MOBILE -PHONE –FACILITATED , ANTI -CHEMICAL -PLANT PROTESTS IN XIAMEN ............................................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 THE PRECARIOUS MOBILE PHONE: THE NINE -YEAR EVOLUTION ............................................... 5 1.3 FROM TECHNOLOGICAL TO SOCIAL TRANSITIONS IN CHINA? ............................................. 9 1.4 THE PREDICAMENT OF PARTICIPATION: CONTROL OVER COMMUNICATION AND POLITICAL APATHY .................................................................................................................................................................. 13 1.5 FRAMEWORK OF THE DISSERTATION ........................................................................................... 17 2. THE COMMUNICATION HAVE-NOTS—UNDERSTANDING COMMUNICATION CONTROL AND “COUNTER-PUBLICS” IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA ................................................................................................................................... 28 2.1 THE VOICELESS AND THEIR EXTREME ACTIONS IN CHINA ................................................. 30 2.2 REVISITING THE IDEA OF COUNTER-PUBLICS ........................................................................... 33 2.2.1 “C OUNTER -PUBLICS ”: THE VOICELESS IN THE WESTERN CONTEXT .......................................... 33 2.2.2 RETHINKING THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND COUNTER -PUBLIC [S] IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA ..... 38 2.3 THE COUNTER-PUBLICS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA ............................................................. 44 2.3.1 THE PROACTIVE COUNTER -PUBLIC .................................................................................................. 44 2.3.2 THE REACTIVE COUNTER -PUBLIC .................................................................................................... 53 2.3.3 THE POTENTIAL COUNTER -PUBLIC .................................................................................................. 60 2.4 COMMUNICATION CONTROL IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA ................................................... 69 2.4.1 COMMUNICATION CONTROL AND “STABILITY MAINTENANCE” .................................................. 69 2.4.2 SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM INFORMATION TO COMMUNICATION.............................................. 73 2.4.3 SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM “HAVE -LESS ” TO “HAVE -NOT ”......................................................... 75 2.5 THE COMMUNICATION HAVE-NOTS IN CHINA .......................................................................... 77 2.6 FROM COUNTER-PUBLICS TO COUNTER-PUBLIC SPHERE ................................................... 81 3. MOBILE MEDIA, DEMOCRACY, AND THE COUNTER-PUBLIC SPHERE: TOWARD A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN CHINA ... 83 3.1 HISTORIZING MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN CHINA .................................................................. 85 3.1.1 MINZHU AND MEDIA AS INSTRUMENTS FOR DICTATORSHIP IN ANCIENT CHINA ..................... 87 3.1.2 “WENREN LUN ZHENG ”: ELITISM AND MODIFICATIONS OF WESTERN -STYLE DEMOCRACY IN THE MODERN CHINESE PRESS ............................................................................................................................ 88 3.1.3 THE PARTY -CONTROLLED MEDIA AND POOR DEMOCRACY IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA .......... 95 3.1.4 APPROACHING THE QUESTION OF MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN CHINA : CONTINUITY , CHANGE , AND CONFLICT ................................................................................................................................................... 101 3.2 MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA: LITERATURE REVIEW AND REFLECTIONS ..................................................................................................................................................... 105 3.3 MOBILE COMMUNCIATION, THE COUNTER-PUBLIC SPHERE, AND DEMOCRATIZATION IN CHINA .............................................................................................................. 110 3.3.1 A THEORETICAL APPROACH TO A “COUNTER -PUBLIC SPHERE ” ............................................... 110 3.3.2 MEDIA AND THE RIGHT TO COMMUNICATION : A KEY TO THE COUNTER -PUBLIC SPHERE .. 113 3.3.3 MOBILE MEDIA AND COUNTER -PUBLIC SPHERE : TOWARD A FRAMEWORK FOR DEMOCRATIZING MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA ........................... 116 4. METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................... 122 4.1 RESEARCH STRATEGY, OBJECTIVES, AND ETHICAL ISSUES ............................................. 122 4.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................ 127 4.2.1 MULTIPLE -CASE STUDIES ............................................................................................................... 127 I 4.2.2 PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION ......................................................................................................... 133 4.2.3 SNOWBALL SAMPLING AND RESPONDENT -DRIVEN SAMPLE .................................................. 136 4.2.4 IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW AND INTERVIEW FRAMEWORK .............................................................. 142 4.3 DATA ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES ....................................................................................................... 147 4.4 RESEARCH LIMITATIONS ................................................................................................................. 148 5. EMBEDDING GUANXI :UNDERSTANDING MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKS IN THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF CHINA .....................................................................