| "Niche" has received wide attention today.But before the advent of the Internet era,Niche has not been fully concerned and the study of Niche has just begun.Why Niche externalized in the Internet Era?This paper focused on this core issue and carried out an inspection on the formation and communication of Niche.The question that why Niche externalized in the Internet Era has included a series of more basic questions:What is the Niche?What is Niche culture?Why and how people participate in Niche?What are the characteristics of Niche?What changes have taken place on Niche and its culture before and after the age of the Internet?What role does the Internet play in these changes?These questions are a group of questions that correlative to each other,the core of which is to describe the characteristics of Niche in Internet era and explore the relationships among self,Niche and Internet.The study followed the typical way of qualitative research.On the basis of the literature review,this paper made a survey of the"Two-dimensions group",a relatively typical Niche group.Study then retrospected the activities of this Niche group and the detailed process of their participation in the group.At the same time,study made a summary on the connotation of Niche,Niche culture and Niche Participate,and the types of Niche also discussed.Niche is a group that has its own culture and the culture deviates from the mainstream culture.It has a lot of similarities with the sub-culture groups,but the research purpose is quite different.Niche does not emphasize on the resistance to mainstream that is contained by subculture,it is more likely to concern about the deviation of mainstream has what kinds of impact on groups and individuals.Niche culture is a culture that deviates from the mainstream culture created by Niche paticipants.Niche participation then should be understood as a special behavior that individuals put their thoughts and feelings into a certain Niche group,rather than a simple entering behavior.Based on those,Niche was divided into three aspacts including the cultural dimension of "mainstream and non-mainstream",the social structure dimension of "surface and laten" and the Space-time dimension of "exsit and non-exsit".Then study chose Lolita group,Homosexual group and Online-game fans group corresponding to different types of dimensions for further field research to explore the relationship among self,Niche and Internet.According to the results of the fieldwork,it is found that in the aspect of self,the act of engaging in the niche has both a relatively personal attachment motivation and a social motivation which is influenced by the temporal and spatial conditions.On the one hand,as a mediator of self attachment instinct,niche relationships can provide self diverse attachment choices which are different from mother to child attachment in the process of individual growth.People's involvement in niche activities,although there may be a variety of contingency factors,but a long period of niche participation will inevitably be supported by attachment.Niche provides a temporary "safe harbour" where people can get the security they need to build themselves.On the other hand,the experience of modernity has brought a great deal of anxiety to the contemporary Chinese people,and the "hollow syndrome" has also emerged."Hollow syndrome" is a symptom of the contemporary people's anxiety about self existence and the way of self construction.In the current time and space,hollow syndrome is spreading throughout the society and acting on the self.In order to seek way to relief " hollow syndrome",people began to reflect in the niche and mass mutually embedded life,the attachment which provided by niche plays an important role in people fleeing of "hollow disease".In addition to the need for attachment and the "hollow syndromel" motivation,the body/media is a more fundamental mediating factor.The media in this study is considered as an extension of the body.For this reason,in the research,self and space are associated via the presence of body.By body space and media space that as extension of body,self fused minority became an emergent process that it didn't have clear boundaries,but at certain time it can make people "Epiphany" to understand the differences between I and the other,the minority and the public.In the whole society,this "Epiphany" have shown an overall shift:social space seems open but not rapidly expanding,on the contrary,due to the expansion of self space is relatively narrow,so that everyone had to live in a larger space to obtain new self while imprisoned themselves in a large but nothing space.Communication as a process accompanied by the development of self and minority was always hidden behind,played an important role in the game between self-space and social-space.On the basis of a series inductive analysis,this paper put forward the concept of"communication clusters",and compares it with the classical concepts of culture cluster and relationship cluster."Communication clusters" is a kind of information flow with certain scale and interrelated in a certain way.As the spread of information flow starting from the self and connecting self with society in the way of"clusters".Although the communication cluster is a concept,it contains the dynamic framework of thinking which putting the Niche phenomenon into mass society.By the keywords "core-periphery","isomorphism" and "connection","communication cluster" has been initially clear,but the scope of the concept still need further explore.And the significance of the Internet to niche can be clarified by the concept of communication cluster.Before the advent of the Internet,because lacking of interaction channals with others,self can only establish contact via self primary communication cluster with the surrounding environment.The new communication technology in mobile and the Internet,as well as the new pattern of communication,provided the possible for individual to go beyond the primary communication cluster,and thus speeded up the formation of niche.Besides,the original potential niche can also be visible through the Internet.When heterogeneous but a large number of niche groups constantly interacted with the public life,the phenomenon of niche then emerged naturally in the social surface..By providing the time contrast mechanism,Niche could make people aware the "hollow symptom" and carry out self-reflection.So"hollow symptom" find a temporary mitigation measures in Niche,and mass and Niche then intertwined.Niche which embedded in the mass became visible therefore.The process of the interaction of self,Niche and the mass forms a "communication cluster",which associates self,Niche and the mass by the way of "cluster".The emergence of the Internet accelerated the above process.It made the communication cluster more complex and the connections occurred between self and niche more diverse.Niche then became externalization in the era of Internet. |
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