Social Media And Rural Community Reshape

The No.1 document of the Central Government in 2021 points out that while achieving the consolidation and expansion of the results of poverty eradication,the capacity of rural governance should be effectively improved to successively promote the revitalization of rural areas in poverty eradication.However,the disintegration of rural communality,the rapid development of farmers’ private desires driven by the process of individualization,and the weak sense of villagers’ individual responsibility dominated by the discourse of rights and freedom have increasingly eliminated the villagers’ sense of belonging and identity to the village.The disintegration of village communality has led to the gradual disintegration of the village community,which in turn has a negative impact on the construction of rural society and rural governance.Under such circumstances,the issue of reshaping the village community needs to be addressed.With cell phones becoming the "new farming tool",social media is increasingly empowering rural governance.Taking rural community as the core concept,this paper selects Leidong Village in Xuchang City,Henan Province,one of the "National Beautiful Leisure Villages",as the research site.The study focuses on the village,following the "geo-community"(spatial dimension),"blood community"(relational dimension)and "spiritual community"(spiritual dimension)proposed by Tennessee,and examines the mechanism of social media’s re-engineering of the rural community.From July to August 2021,the researcher conducted a questionnaire survey with a sample size of 188 in Leidong village to understand the villagers’ social media use and participation behavior in rural public affairs.With the help of a key contact person,the researcher accessed the "Lei Dong Village Mass Work Group in Ziyun Township" to conduct online observations and obtained the We Chat records from January to July 2021.Through questionnaires,in-depth interviews,and online observations,we investigated the current characteristics of the village community and the paths of social media in the village community.It was found that respondents used social media for about 3 hours a day on average,We Chat became the main social tool,family and friends communication was the main motivation for use,and safety issues were the most widely concerned by villagers.On the whole,social media have expanded the space of rural community by creating rural online public space and reviving physical public space;promoted villagers’ public actions and bridged rural community relations by building a mediated cooperation network;cultivated rural community relations through the "common production" of content production and the "collective constructive" of endogenous discourse presentation.Through the "collective constructiveness" of content production and endogenous discourse presentation,the public spirit of the village is cultivated.Social media have recreated rural communities in three dimensions:common presence,public interaction,and public spirit.However,in the context of increased mobility,the absence of media self-organizing groups has not led to a systematic public action model in Leidong Village,and the lack of a professional team to govern and carry out actions has led to mixed social media content production and ineffective villagers’ public action.To rebuild the village community,it is necessary to enhance villagers’ subjectivity,establish media self-organization,form a public action model,and carry out villagers’ media literacy education.