Copyright by Shaohua Guo 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Shaohua Guo Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: THE EYES OF THE INTERNET: EMERGING TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE CULTURE Committee: Sung-Sheng Yvonne Chang, Supervisor Janet Staiger Madhavi Mallapragada Huaiyin Li Kirsten Cather THE EYES OF THE INTERNET: EMERGING TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE CULTURE by Shaohua Guo, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2012 Dedication To my grandparents, Guo Yimin and Zhang Huijun with love Acknowledgements During the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China in 2003, I, like many students in Beijing, was completely segregated from the outside world and confined on college campus for a couple of months. All activities on university campuses were called off. Students were assigned to designated dining halls, and were required to go to these places at scheduled times, to avoid all possible contagion of the disease. Surfing the Web, for the first time, became a legitimate “full-time job” for students. As was later acknowledged in the Chinese media, SARS cultivated a special emotional attachment to the Internet for a large number of the Chinese people, and I was one of them. Nine years later, my emotional ties to the Chinese Internet were fully developed into a dissertation, for which I am deeply indebted to my advisor Dr. Sung- Sheng Yvonne Chang. Her unflagging enthusiasm in this project, commitment to the highest standards, and guidance during different stages of my writing continuously inspired me and made this study possible. I have also benefited immensely from the wisdom of my committee members. Among them, Dr. Janet Staiger offered me invaluable insights on the development of this project. A very special acknowledgement goes to Dr. Madhavi Mallapragada. I learned much on new media studies from taking her seminars, and our discussions have always been pleasant, inspiring, and fruitful. I would like to express sincere thanks to Dr. Kirsten Cather, whose thorough and insightful comments on this dissertation will guide me in my future academic career. My thanks also go to Dr. Huaiyin Li for serving on my dissertation committee, and providing v feedback on my work. His kind encouragement and comments are always sincerely appreciated. My research could not have been completed without the generous support from the University Continuing Fellowship, the Tom and Martha Ward Endowed Fellowship, the Emily Knauss Graduate Scholarship for Liberal Arts, the Louise J. Faurot Memorial Endowed Fellowship in Chinese Studies, the East Asia Graduate Fellowship, and the Taiwan Studies Grant. These fellowships allowed me to conduct fieldwork in mainland China and Taiwan. I would like to thank Dr. Chiu Kuei-Fen at National Chung Hsing University for supervising my stay as a visiting student in Taiwan. I cannot thank Dr. Ko Yu-Fen at National Chengchi University enough for taking time out of her busy schedule to meet with me and introduce me to media scholars and professionals in Taiwan. I also would like to acknowledge Dr. Shiu Wen-Wei, Dr. Chen Shun-hsiao, Huang Che-bin, and Cheng Kuo-wei for lending me their intellectual insights on this project. I owe my deepest gratitude to all my interviewees who spent time with me, and offered me their observations on Internet culture in China and Taiwan. The Department of Asian Studies, my home department, offered me a most congenial and supportive environment. I owe earnest thanks to Dr. Wen-Hua Teng, who has never hesitated to lend her support during my graduate study at the University of Texas at Austin. Her professionalism and integrity has exerted tremendous influence on my own professional growth. Dr. Chiu-Mi Lai has also showed a steady interest in this project, and bits and pieces of this dissertation were presented in her classes over a span of three years. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Lai and her wonderful students for sharing vi with me their insights. I also would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Chien-Hsin Tsai, Dr. David Sena, and Dr. Camilla Hsieh for their support and encouragement over the years. My thanks also goes to my graduate coordinator Victoria Vlach and Dr. Robert Oppenheim for being so considerate and responsive. Without their timely response to those paperwork-related issues, my defense would not have been scheduled so smoothly. I would like to express my appreciation towards my friends throughout the whole process. I am particularly grateful to Yingru Li and Zhongwei Liu for giving me their unequivocal support through all of the ups and downs. I thank my friends in the UT league, including Euhwa Tran, Li Yang, Lorin Lee, Flora Fu-Ying Chuang, Linlin Wang, Nhu Truong, and Yi Lv, for all of their encouragement. I am truly thankful to my friends Xiaoyan Xing, Yang Yang, Gu Haihui, Li Weidong, Zhou Peiyao, and Zheng Tingying for making my fieldwork in Beijing a lot more enjoyable and fruitful. A special thanks goes out to the UT Impromptu Speech Club, which enabled me to meet friends with diverse backgrounds and significantly broadened my intellectual horizons. In particular, Bert Brown and Beverly Brown have taught me about commitment, and led me to think positively and embrace various challenges in life. I am also grateful to Tianyang Wang, Yuki Xueying Guan, and Chuck Peek for being so willing to cheer me up and help me take breaks away from writing. Last, but by no means least, I would like to convey my gratitude to my family, near and far, for their unreserved love and support over the years. I am deeply indebted to my grandparents and parents who have always inspired me and encouraged me to go my own way. I am particularly thankful to my husband, Jianping, who has always been vii interested in listening to all my observations on current events and shared with me his insights. While he completely fits the stereotype of a science major, I consider myself a true beneficiary in this regard. Without his patience, constant encouragement, and positive feedback I would never have been able to come this far. viii THE EYES OF THE INTERNET: EMERGING TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE CULTURE Shaohua Guo, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Sung-Sheng Yvonne Chang China in the new millennium has witnessed the surge of the digital wave, which has played a pivotal role in reshaping the social and cultural landscapes. This dissertation employs institutional and content analysis to link the ascendance of Internet culture with the state-led marketization, commercialization, and modernization project. By systematically examining blog and Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), two of the most dynamic online spaces in China, it brings to the fore the intertwining official, commercial, individual, and social forces conducive to the vitality, ingenuity, and diversity of Internet culture in China. The main body of this dissertation is divided into four chapters. Chapter one describes the developmental history of the Internet and blogging industry in China, and discusses how the rule of the attention economy dominates the industrial practice of commercial Internet portals. By taking Sina.com as a primary case study, this chapter elucidates how the strategic structuring of attention is paramount for Sina.com’s success in promoting celebrity blogs. In turn, celebrity blogging has fundamentally changed the social and cultural landscape of China. The following three chapters delineate three prominent cultural modes digital media have fostered: fun-seeking, trailblazing, and taboo-breaking. Each formulation epitomizes how a particular style of attention rule is ix implemented in online space. Chapter two investigates how the playful collective attention projected on an alternative media type fosters the birth of China’s first Internet celebrity: Furong Jiejie (Sister Lotus). Chapter three explores how the “attention-haves,” represented by such celebrities as Yang Lan and Xu Jinglei, innovatively capitalize on the attention rule and engage in new modes of cultural production via new media. In chapter four, I use blogs of Mu Zimei and Han Han as examples, and detail how their taboo- breaking practices disrupt preset parameters of social, cultural, and political norms. I contend their particular style of blogging greatly contributes to catching public attention and engaging in contentious issues, which further fosters the emergence of a literal public sphere in contemporary China. x Table of Contents List of Tables ....................................................................................................... xiv List of Figures ........................................................................................................xv Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Literature Review: From the "Eyes" of the Internet to the "I"s of the Internet ................................................................................................................3 From the Party Principle to the Attention Rule: The Structural Transformation of the Cultural Field since the 1990s ...................................................23 The Rule of Attention Economy ...................................................................35 Chapter One Internet and