Ethnic Identity In Cyberspace

The growing up of Intemet was a global social,political,economic and culturalevent in the latter half of 20th century.In the informational and networked age,theencounter of globalization and collective identity not only presents a new basictension of social appearance,but also constitutes the two basic powers to shape worldfeatures in the future.Particularly,the global and interactive Internet is used by avariety of collective identity powers to cohere their identity and strengthen the poweragainst globalization.Consequently,taking cyberspace as the research field andanalyzing the ethnic identity practice,will be valuable and significant for not onlygrasping the change of ethnic identity in Internet age,but also understanding of theworld' s developing trend in the future.On a space theory view,taking ChineseMuslims Website as the case,with Ethnography method,from the two dimensions ofIntemet interaction and collective memory,this dissertation tried to make an empiricalresearch on the ethnic identity practice in cyberspace,to sort out and reveal thesubstance of the construction of Muslims' ethnic identity practice,as well as theeffects of Muslims' ethnic identity practice on shaping social features in cyberspace.There are five chapters in this dissertation.Chapter one briefly introduces the background,problem consciousness,significance and framework of the research,reviews and defines the main concepts inthe research and make a brief discussion on the object and methods of the research.Chapter two discusses the formation and substance of Chinese Muslims BBSvirtual community through social network analysis methods.Different fromtraditional district community,BBS virtual community is a network community orinteractive community.Through investigation into network size,degree,out-degree,in-degree,point centrality,point centralization,betweenness centrality,betweennesscentralization,network density and network cohesion,this chapter concludes thatmainly there are weak ties while already some strong ties in Chinese Muslims BBSvirtual community.Concerning about the details of interaction,there are mainly fourbasic network types in Chinese Muslims BBS virtual community,namely discussionnetwork,emotion network,information network and helping network.Chapter three discusses the construction and formation of Chinese Muslims BBS virtual community in detail.It points out that,a new Muslims identity based on theHui Muslims' folk tradition,different from ethnic identity in nation-state,has beenemerging from Chinese Muslims BBS virtual community.At the same time,beliefboundary centered on Islam between the Muslims and the non-Muslims has beenemerging,which constitutes the main ethnic boundary of Chinese Muslims BBSvirtual community.This chapter also discusses the effects of Intemet interaction onethnic identity through quantitative and qualitative analysis.Chapter four analyzed the relationship between collective memory and ethnicidentity.It points out that,in Chinese Muslims BBS virtual community,Islam beliefcentered on Ummah constitutes the basic values and meaning framework for coheringethnic identity and constructing collective memory.Just in this framework,throughcollective memory such as ethnic origin,honorable history of the ethnicity,sufferingsand crises of the ethnicity and daily life emotions,members of this virtual communityconstituted and cohered Muslims identity centered on Ummah.This chapter alsodiscusses the narrative structure of the members,as well as the effects of narrativestructure on their ethnic identity.Chapter five presents the conclusion.Based on the view of space theory,thischapter discusses the characteristic of mutual construction of cyberspace and ethnicidentity.On one hand,the growing up of cyberspace provides new chance,probabilityand limit with the construction of ethnic identity,on the other hand,Muslims' ethnicidentity practice through social interaction and collective memory in cyberspace,brings about the ethnicitization in cyberspace.This dissertation gives the first try to probe into the ethnic identity practice incyberspace with empirical way.The main contribution of this dissertation is,itdevelops a view of space theory to discuss ethnic identity,and based on this theoryview,from social interaction and collective memory,takes Chinese Muslims BBSvirtual community as the case,develops a empirical study on ethnic identity practicein virtual community and space presentation.