Folk Video And The Construction Of Civil Society In China

It is commonly known in the realm of communication study that China has been involving deeply in the revolution of communication and information. The highly visualization in our daily life and culture has pushed visuality to the most distinct position. Meanwhile, as the renovation and popularization of video-producing and communication technology, thousands of folk video has sprung up in the traditional media and internet. In the chapter two, this essay, from the perspective of subjects of combination and sociology, based on the study results of forerunners, redefines the concept of folk video and discusses its commonness and differences with official video, commercial video, professional documentary and independent video. The chapter three, taking the technological development as a clue, summarizes the ten-year development of folk video and its types and characteristics in modern times. The chapter four, which is the core part of this essay, mainly from the perspective of civil society theory, selects three angles: private folk video, public folk video, the relationship between spreading of folk video and construction of communication rationality to have a deep explanation on the cultural significance of folk video. This essay holds the view that folk video, as one of language codes which could be decoded easily from the folks, in the first place, is the self-presentation of folk ideology. It, combined with official video and commercial video and professional documentary, forms a kind of polyphonic video narration with multi-angles and multi-levels, eliminates step by step the traditional mainstream ideological hegemony in the past, offers the audiences with a brand new self-identification environment. In the second place, by the way of "being on the scene", folk video represents the historic reality as the resources of public discussion, breaks the delivering frame of public memory controlled by the traditional power and commercialism.The production and communication of folk video transcend the dispute on the truth of locutionary act in the theory of Habermas, the validity of illocutionary act under the specific circumstance, and sincerity of folk video makers when they tries to express his emotions. Comparing to traditional methods of communication such as spoken language, words and pictures, the communicating method of making folk video is much more approximate to validity of communication rationality. Therefore, the communication of folk video is more beneficial to the rational communication for people in the public-sphere constructed by the internet, more helpful to eliminate, to some extent, Internet Tyranny of the Majority, to the dynamic balance and democratization of discourse power, and thus to promote the construction of civil society.