| Human communication has went through four main historical stages, that isancient verbal communication, mediaeval written communication, recent presscommunication, and modern electronic communication. These four stages formed onthe basis of the great change of media. Since the1990s, people have entered a new eraalong with the continuous progress of digital, computer network and virtual realitytechnology, and its application in the field of transmission and communication.Especially in2007, Apple Inc launched iphone, the first generation of smart phones, andthereafter, smart phone rapidly swept around the world. By2013, the number ofsmartphone users in China has reached354million, which marks the arrival of the eraof universal intelligence. The popularity of smartphone promoted the development ofvarious kinds of mobile phone application software. Particularly, all kinds of socialnetworking sites emerging from the beginning of the21st century launched mobilephone APPs by taking advantage of the characteristics of smartphone that it is easy tocarry and can surf the Internet anytime and anywhere. As a result, it will further makethe interpersonal relationships across time and space distance, transferring theinterpersonal relationships in real life to virtual space, and completely change people’sprevious social style and means of communication.The WeChat launched by Tencent has accumulated700million users in just threeyears. Being an IM mobile telecommunication software, it changed people’scommunication mode and life style, especially for those who grow up in the Internet agebecause of their strong ability to accept the new media. Besides, the characteristics ofcheap prices, convenient communications and various forms greatly satisfied the needsof college students. Therefore, college students have become an important userpopulation. In the meantime, the WeChat has great influence on college students’interpersonal relationships because of its transmission features.Through literature data collection, questionnaire survey, and empirical analysis,this thesis explores the spread situation of WeChat in colleges and universities and itsinfluence on the students’ interpersonal relationships based on the theories ofcommunication, mass communication, psychology, sociology, human relations andother disciplines. Taking the students of Chongqing University as objects, the currentresearch adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods. This thesis consists of six parts, the structural arrangement of which follows thefollowing scientific logical order: problem observation, problem analysis, and thesolution. The first part mainly introduces background of the study, purpose andsignificance of the study, the present research situation and methodologies. The secondpart mainly introduces the WeChat, including its characteristics and compares it withsome other major domestic social networking tools. Employing both questionnaire andinterviews, the third part mainly investigates students’ current situation of the use ofWeChat, including the usage rate, the using motivation, hours of use, communicationcontents, transmission modes and its transmission characteristics in colleges anduniversities. The fourth part mainly analyzes students’ using psychology. Interpersonalrelationship in social psychology refers to people’s psychological relationship in theprocess of interaction, therefore, it is important to understand students’ usingpsychology for analyzing and studying WeChat’s influence on their interpersonalrelationships. The fifth part talks about the positive and negative influences based on theresults of the investigation and analysis. In the last part, in view of the negativeinfluence that the WeChat have on the students’ interpersonal relationships, the authorput forward some positive measures which school, teachers and students themselvesshould take to build harmonious college relationships. |
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