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Performance Of The Carnival: The Network Of Individual Self - Presentation And Communication Behavior

Posted on:2014-04-20Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:J Q ChenFull Text:PDF
GTID:1108330434971315Subject:Radio and Television
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This dissertation focuses on the impact of new communication and media technologies on individual psychological process. Different from other current domestic researches in relation to micro-blogging, this study lays emphasis on the individual’s interactive ritual of the online and offline world with the medium of Chinese micro-blogging. With an aim to describe the social interaction and the everyday life of the new media users and to search for the dynamics of the micro-bloggers, this dissertation adopts mixed methods combining both qualitative and quantitative research paradigms.The author spent nearly one year to do the ethnographic field research. The ground-working includes participant observation on5online Chinese micro-blog platforms, face-to-face in-depth interview with the micro-bloggers from the three provinces of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong which own the highest population of netizens and a content analysis with the data from the micro-bloggers and cities location background data base. Using the dramaturgical theory and the interaction ritual chains which belongs to the Symbolic Interaction Theory, this study intends to investigate Chinese micro-bloggers’ change of communicative behavior both online and offline.The combination of technologies such as mobile Internet, smart phone and micro-blog has rewritten the cultural landscape of the city life and reconstructing the relationship between the individual, the city, and the society. Randall Collins doubted whether "non-body present" could amass the emotion as Interaction Ritual Chains. The study has responded to Collins’ question with the Chinese local experience. It is found that the relationship between the elements and the consequence of interaction ritual was a type of reciprocal subjectivity. Moreover, the interaction between the online and offline society has made the performing stage become more complicated—more front stages and back stages have appeared.This study explained how the micro-blogging got involved into people’s everyday life as a kind of digital fashion. With a critical perspect, the author found that the setting of the function and operating strategy of Chinese micro-blog had become far more deviated from the original Twitter model.It is found that locate micro-blog companies, including Sina Weibo, Tengcent Weibo, Sohu Weibo and Netease Weibo, which are running by four biggest portals website companies, are reforming the rules of Chinese micro-blog in order to reap the commercial interests and to avoid political control. They had strengthened the mechanisms of self-censorship and control concerning the content released by personal users. At the same time, entertainment topics were setting on the agenda. Social, economic topics were also edited into recreational and sensational ones. Moreover, news schemata have been used to edit the topic all around the native micro-blog.This article has explored particularly the dynamic process of the Attention Mechanism of interaction ritual by viewing the individuals, status groups and the performing stage as a whole subject. The micro-blog provided an attention mechanism stage which allowed the individuals to show their inner self by evoking shared concern and common emotion of strangers. The motivation is to trade for the prestige and recognition brought by others’ attention. Micro-blog platform’s innovation of function and operational strategy, had making the individuals getting more and more useful performance equipments to dealize their self-performing. The innovation of the function of the micro-blog platform and the change of operations strategy idealize the individual’s performance and enrich the performing props they need. Operations strategy connected the interaction of the virtual world with the social capital from the real world, indicating that the micro-blogger could interact with more specific objects with clearer goals.This study also pointed out that the intrinsic motivation which enabled the individuals to go beyond their inner self included dispelling loneliness and solitude, seeking for concerned and identity, seeking for a romantic relationship, obtaining sense of security and avoiding face-to-face interaction. The emotional interaction between family members, social media usage history and education status have a positive effect on individual’s interaction online while the working groups played an important role in using the micro-blog as a culture symbol.Internet-mediated interaction allows the users to select more specific interactive objects. Furthermore the Chinese micro-blog platform is using the real-name authentication to swift the real world social hierarchies to the virtual world, which makes the micro-bloggers more inclined to interact with leaders from all kinds of industries, social celebrities and entertainment stars. In addition, stigma groups’ diversion of micro-blog could be found through visible stigma behavior and cultural style in everyday life. The author chose the disabled people, homosexuals, transsexuals and sex workers as the stigma sample group to explain how they stepped out of their low self-esteem, somber and clandestine cabinet of ego and come out to integrate into social interaction.
Keywords/Search Tags:Micro-blog, social interaction, self-represent, individualcommunicative action
PDF Full Text Request
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