"Human Flesh Search" Phenomenon Research

“Human flesh search” has caused broad attention among international societies and media in recentyears and become a unique cultural phenomenon in the Chinese world. By using varied web-sites asmedium and Internet-users as resources, human flesh search is considered a kind of mass movement toreveal secret and clarify the truth by collective forces based on Internet search engines and data presentedby informed but anonymous people. Unlike in Western societies, the purpose of using the Internet tools forhuman flesh search in Chinese societies is mainly to improve unreasonable, unfair situations in the realworld through the power of virtual world. The researcher adopted text analysis approach to analyze theinteractive process of media and Internet-users on a number of representative cases of human flesh searchactivities. The primary purpose of this study was to explore which social events were prone to causeInternet-users’ interest in human flesh search and their motivations. Secondly, the core issue of the studywas to understand the roles and functions of varied media in human flesh search and the impacts offollow-up events in the search process. Finally, the researcher explored the main reasons for the success orfailure in human flesh search based on the analysis of case studies in order to grasp the contextual factorsfor successfully initiating human flesh search. Finally, the guide mechanism of human flesh search.After text analyses, the researcher found that media played a critical role in human flesh search interms of information spreading and determining the success or failure during the search process. In manysuccessful search cases, well-known forums became the main initiating medium in spreading the events.The events became reinforced after the information communication among numerous personal blogs andsocial community networks as well as the follow-up reports by the mass media. Finally, because the medianews digging and reporting on Internet forums and bringing broad attention to the general public, whichreinforced the Internet-users’ follow-up motivations for human flesh search.As the purposes and functions of human flesh search, the researcher found that Internet-users’ purposefor human flesh search was not to “search” only, but to “sanction” those who disobeyed social norms. Inaddition, the researcher also found that human flesh search can bring positive social functions by people’scollective information tracking and searching which might restore the truth gradually, thus stimulatepublic’s opinions, and even influence the actions and reactions of both media and the government.