Research On The Motivation Of Participants In Internet "Human Flesh Search"

Internet "Human Flesh Search" refers to the tracking down of the truth and privacy of certain things or person by the power of netizens through the online community, and trying to exposing these details. This phenomenon reflects the motivation of China’s Internet population to participate in the social supervision by public opinion and maintain the social justice, and on the other hand, it can be used to meet the personal desires of voyeur and needs of emotional catharsis."Human Flesh Search", known as the most terrible internet hunting, which very easily lead to the occurrence of the internet violence is a kind of group behavior in nature. Exploring the psychological motivations behind this kind of the group behavior will help to increase our awareness and understandings of the "Human Flesh Search", and provide some suggestions to channelize and regulate this behavior, and promote the healthy development of China’s Internet.Objects of the study——"Internet’Human Flesh Search’Participants" refers to those netizens who have paid attention to the "Human Flesh Search", or participated in the spread of the "Human Flesh Search", provided some related information, organized of the "Human Flesh Search" or collected and sorted out relevant information. Qualitative and quantitative research method were hired in this study, firstly, explore the psychological motivations of the participants involved in the "Human Flesh Search" through personal interviews, and using the coding techniques of the "Grounded Theory" to analyze and summarize the motivation factors; and then, compile the Internet "Human Flesh Search" Participant Motivation Measurement Questionnaire accord to the results of the interview study, and then release it into the objects to explore and validate the motivation structure of the participants of the "Human Flesh Search".The results of this study show that:1. Internet "Human Flesh Search" Participant Motivation Measurement Questionnaire has good reliability and validity. The participant’s motivation structure can be divided into two dimensions:Social Motivation (Moral Uphold, Group Follow) and Personal Motivation (Voyeur Desire, Emotion Catharsis), and Anonymous Facilitation as the influence factor scale. The confirmatory factor analysis results show that the model fits well.2. The Social Motivation of the "Human Flesh Search" participants is stronger than the Personal Motivation, and sort by the strength as follow:Moral Uphold> Group Follow> Voyeur Desire> Emotion Catharsis.3. The anonymity of the network environment can facilitate the participants’ behaviors in the "Human Flesh Search" events.4. The degree of participation in the Internet "Human Flesh Search" has no significant gender, age, education and network age effects.