The Expression And Confrontation Of Time Anxiety In Online Communities

The accelerating wave of modernity has pushed the overall social culture in the direction of accelerated competition.In the process of catching up with each other,people are prone to a sense of urgency and anxiety that they are unable to adapt and keep up,and are more sensitive to the invisible passage of time.Anxiety has become an emotionally explicit experience that modern people cannot avoid,and time anxiety has become a symptom of the times that affects the whole society.It is noteworthy that with the establishment of a sound online platform,some time anxious people have chosen to express themselves here,gathering in the douban group,a typical online public discussion space,forming a time anxious online community based on similar experiences and concerns.In this community,group members exchange and collide in the interactive expression of postings and replies,leading to relatively consistent attitudes and views on time anxiety.In this paper,we use fantasy theme analysis to study four douban groups on the topic of time anxiety.The main posts and replies of the groups were analysed with the help of Nvivo software,and coded and tagged according to the recurring roles,scenarios,actions and legitimacy mechanisms of the repetitive discourse,in order to refine fantasy themes and fantasy types,and then construct a rhetorical vision to explore the common imagination and cognitive picture of time anxiety among community members.In terms of specific content,the paper first explores the reasons for the formation of time-anxious online communities,arguing that firstly,media technology has provided an open and egalitarian online space,secondly,online communities have met the needs of time-anxious people for information experiences and a sense of belonging and identity,and thirdly,fluid clusters have established new relational networks,making it possible for them to self-portray and share their expressions.Secondly,we focus on the fantasy types and themes of time anxious douban groups.Seven fantasy themes were found from the analysis of the research sample,which were summarized and integrated into three major fantasy types.Fantasy type one,which takes synchronous social time as the fantasy object,contains "frustration of catching up with scarce time exacerbated by the academic society","confusion of seeking value due to meaningless work time" and "the experience of a complete life in a secular society encourages age panic".The second fantasy type,which is based on a dysfunctional inner rhythm,contains two fantasy themes: "self-blame for the mismatch between the ideal and the real self",and "the anxiety of falling behind due to peer comparison".Fantasy type three,which is based on a character fighting against time anxiety,containing two fantasy themes: "trying to cross over by example" and "being inspired by the sharing of others to achieve self-connection".Finally,it is found that members interact with each other through the online text,providing moral,social and practical comparisons,triggering members of the community to consciously and actively examine the value of time and to save themselves and each other,thus extending the construction of the two major themes of "reshaping the value of time" at the cognitive level and "exercising time autonomy" at the action level.The two rhetorical horizons are "reshaping the value of time" at the cognitive level and "exercising time autonomy" at the action level.From the above analysis and the author’s reflexive thinking,it is found that time anxious people in the douban group,which is called "our spiritual corner",consciously examine the value of time and the meaning of life through joint expression,discussion and confrontation,making a limited relief of time anxiety possible.