Research Of Identity Change Under The Perspective Of The Network Society

Manuel castells demonstrates the magnificent social change caused by information technology in The Rise of the Network Society, and the wilder worldwide social movement by social change in The Power of Identity. According to his thoughts, the article, regarding information technology, social change, and identity change as the mainline, analyzes the issue by Castells’ research of the social morphology changing into network society under information technology pattern. It further illustrates the change from individual identity, community identity to far-reaching and complicated social identity change under the internet background, through the case study of Under the dome.Research method:(1) Literature analysis method. Collecting lots of co-related articles of the network society by Castells and looked into comprehensive papers on the network society theory and introduction of Castells. Through reading his works and his analysis, differentiation and classification on the forerunners, the article generally clarifies Castells’ research method and research thought, gets its own research direction and research significance.(2) Text analysis. Focus on the information technology, identity movement in the network society theory of Castells and refer to, evaluate and classify the texts.(3) Case study. Research into Castells’ social identity movement by case studying Under the dome.Structure: The first chapter briefly introduce Castells’ lifetime and outlines comprehensively the current research situation. The second chapter analyzes and clarifies the origin of the network society promoted by information technology, explains what the network society in real sense, discusses information technology as the basic impetus of network society and the problem caused by technology. The third chapter analyzes the public opinion frenzy triggered by Under the dome, from the perspective of the identity change resulting from social change promoted by information technology. The fourth chapter induces and analyzes the thinking and enlightenment of social and identity change by information technology.Several innovation including research content, case study and research perspective:(1) New research content. Starting from the three contributing factors promoting the rising of cyber society, this article regards information technology as the key to analyze the network society, and ponder over the problems such as digital gap and social rejection under the technology impetus.(2) New case. Use Under the dome to illustrate identity change in terms of social movement research.(3) New research angle. Most of the researches concentrate on Castells’ theory from the view of society theory, but this paper mainly turns to the perspective of media to analyze the significant influence of Castells’ information theory in the media research field.