On The Youth Culture Space In Network Society

Youth culture, as a life style, behavior pattern, and view of value which is identified and shared by young people, is a special cultural pattern which is relatively independent from dominant culture and popular culture. Youth culture is co-constructed by the youth and the society, and always exists, develops, and evolves in a specific social space. With the vigorous development of network society, current youth culture is burgeoning with the new space constructed by new media. Compared with the previous youth culture, the current one has had massive changes in terms of style, communication model, consumption pattern, and evolution pattern.The well-known network space sociologist, Manuel Castells, defined culture as a process of transmission and communication, which can be strongly verified by the boom of youth culture in network society. Based on it, this paper analyzes the inherent logic of youth culture changing from self-assertion to peer recognition and then to power competition from three dimensions, namely,"self space","tribe space", and "public space", having a foothold in the position which regards the subjects of youth as "human beings", regarding "space" as the main thread of the theoretical path, and borrowing the theoretical perspectives of youth subculture, culture study, cultural sociology, and communication study. It opens up a new path for describing, understanding, and explaining contemporary youth culture. This paper argues that during the process of youth culture development from reality space to cyberspace, and from private space to public space, network new media are not only new channels connecting youth culture with social relationships, but also new platforms of youth culture to duplicate culture and nurture psychologic function.