| The purpose of this study is to focus on the field of interpersonal communication in the network,starting from the communicative behavior of individuals in the new communication context,and to study the social anxiety in the context of new media such as WeChat and weibo.The study takes college students who are also the main Internet communication users as the research object,analyzing their usage of WeChat and Weibo and social anxiety from the perspective of micro-individual social media dependence and social media self-presentation through the methods of questionnaire and depth interview.This paper examines into the phenomenon of social anxiety,proposes depth thought in view of the current user network interaction and the relationship between social anxiety.Through empirical research,this paper finds out that:(1)College students' social anxiety and social media dependence have a positive impact on social anxiety online.Among the mutual influences of social anxiety and social media dependence,social anxiety has a stronger influence on social anxiety online and four factors than social media dependence.The conclusion that social media dependence exerting a positive influence on social anxiety online gives empirical proof to the phenomenon of alienation of network communication.(2)The reality social anxiety has a negative impact on college students' social media self-presentation,which supports the hypothesis that "the rich get richer" under the network communication environment.Specifically,college students with higher levels of social anxiety have lower levels of social media self-presentation.Due to the mutual influence between self-presentation of social media and social media dependence,the less self-presentation in the network communication environment,the more difficult it is to form dependence on social media,and the less use of social media,the more restricted individual interaction through social media.The study findsout that online social anxiety,especially privacy anxiety has no effect on college students' social media self-presentation,which confirms the existence of “privacy paradox”.(3)There are individual differences in college students' online social anxiety.In particular,Male and female college students have significant differences in privacy anxiety.For example,female college students are slightly more anxious about privacy than their counterparts.There are also significant differences in privacy concerns between the two groups,namely,literature,history,finance and economics and science,industry,agriculture and medicine.Moreover,the college students who are living in big cities are concerned more about anxiety than those who come from rural areas.On the basis of empirical research,12 college students were selected for in-depth interviews.The interview results show that“uncertainty”is a significant influence to generate anxiety when users are in the network communication.The lack/loss of nonverbal symbols puts the two communicative subjects into an “vacuum society”position,leading into an inconsistent and blurring communication effect.As a result,users are often not only confused but also accompanied with anxiety.Network communication brings "centrifugal life" to users.Weak relation connection established in virtual space is lack of stability.Virtual communication without "staring" increases the sense of alienation between communication subjects.The communicators control the“expressed expressions”based on the expectation of their own roles.Also the individuals tend to fall into anxiety as the result of the choices of initiative and diversity.Based on the findings of empirical research and in-depth interviews,the author proposes that while network communication enriches our life and brings convenience,the communication of individuals in the virtual space of the network is also increasingly alienated.And attention should be paid to media literacy education and the construction of communication rationality which could promote the all-round development of people. |
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