Collective Action And Emotional Mobilization Of The Network Transmission Of Social Risks

Through the rapid development of more than 30 years after the reform and opening-up,China has achieved great success in economy.At the same time,social contradictions have become increasingly prominent.Hence Chinese society is in the critical period of economic transition and social transformation as well as the stage of crisis occurrences.And the social hazards and contradictions are becoming increasingly diverse and acute as a result of the changing values and imbalanced interests.With the birth of the new social identities and the groups of social identification,the diversified interest groups have started to appear and the varied group political expressions and the interests-defending actions of social actors have emerged again.Furthermore,although not connected to the Internet until 1994,China has grown into the world's largest Internet using country after the development of merely 20 years.With the rapid development and popularization of the Internet,the public network has strongly eliminated the temporal and spatial boundaries,embedded comprehensively into the public life and become the critical factors in the social structures.It has not only subverted the traditional forms of media industry,but also reconstructed the old relational structures of power transmission and given the lower-class people the unprecedented communication power and discourse spaces.In recent years,group-resistance events have frequently occurred online and offline through the network media and mobilization channels.As an important manifestation of social risks,network collective action has increasingly become a focus problem which triggered widespread social concern and posed a threat to the social stability.Therefore,the research of collective action under the Internet context is of unique significance and value in China today.According to the theoretical path of social psychology in the communication studies and the interpretation framework of irrational collective action in the Western collective action researches,based on the theoretical basis of sociology of emotions,contentious politics and Social movement theory,this paper explores the social psychological factors of collective action among the network transmission of social risks and the influences of public network on the shaping of social psychological structures and the mode of action through the period of rapid change and transformation of Chinese Society and manages to comprehend the emotional mobilization mechanisms of network collective action and the emotional logics resulted from actions in high-risk transition period from the perspective of emotional analysis.Zhao Dingxin,a professor at the University of Chicago and the winner of the best-book award of both American Society for Asian Studies and the researches of collective action and social movement,thinks the macro structures which influence and determine the social movement and the emergence and development of revolution can be summarized as transition,structure and discourse.Therefore,towards the theoretical researches of network collective action in the transformation period of Chinese society,this paper will stick to the logical relations between social vicissitudes,the rise of the Internet,group emotions and collective action and expand the topics from the levels of macro,meso and micro:the first is the study focused on the nature of the network collective action,the second is the study of the motivation and mobilization mechanisms of network collective action and the last one is the study of the mobilization tactics and discourse strategies of the network collective action.The study on the properties of collective action means the analysis of the connotation and extension of collective action from the macro level,including the concept spectrum,basic structure,evolution process,influential factors,social consequences and functions involving the positive and negative aspects of collective action.The study of motivation and mobilization mechanisms of collective action is to explore the emotional motives,driving forces and emotional mobilization mechanisms of network collective action and to detect the reasons for collective action occurrences from the intermediate perspective;thestudy of mobilization techniques and discourse strategies of network collective action is to analyze the specific means of the organization and mobilization of network collective action from the micro level and the discourse communication strategies adopted in order to realize the construction of meaning and collective identity.And its aim is to explore how the network collective action took place.This paper is developed from the perspectives of macro,meso and micro which correspond to solve three questions of "what","why","how" involving the occurrence of network collective action,while its core and principle axis is "the law of psychological motives and emotional mobilization of network collective action",namely "the generating and operating mechanisms of collective action under the influence of emotions."This paper can be regarded as a further study and empirical test of the western correlation theoryand interpretation framework in the context of China.It is the combination of the western theory and the local experience as well as the attempt and diligence of the localization of western theories.Facing the largest social change in the history of humanity and the maximum Internet market in the whole world,the explanatory power and adaptability of the western theories deserve enough attention of the researchers.