The Internet battle between the authorities and the public: The power and the limits of social control and informational capitalism in China's blogosphere.

摘要

While the Internet facilitates communication and interactions between individuals, blogs have further changed the way people put forward concepts in new forms of advocacy and reach genuine interactions with their audiences. In essence, blogging as the emergent new communication platform is playing an important role in transforming China's society after its economic openness due to its crucial function in building and encouraging a wild variety of conversations. The expansion of the blogosphere has inevitably involved critical reactions, particularly in a society in which control over information still prevails. This study explores the implication of blogging in Post-socialist China on the country's social changes, cultural characteristics, and political empowerment within the contexts of the gaze through the panoptic and synoptic structures. It seeks to answer perplexing questions in regards to the extent to which Internet censorship influences the proponents of a networked public sphere and nascent civil society.