China and the Internet
Using New Media for Development and Social Change

Song Shi (Author)

9781978834736

Paperback / softback, published 15 December 2023

380 pages, 36 B-W figures and 36 tables
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.8 cm, 0.485 kg

"[A] seminal work. . . . Through its theoretically informed, empirically rich framework, the monograph offers groundbreaking insights into how new media ecosystems catalyze developmental processes and enable social transformation in contemporary China." (International Journal of Communication) "Documentarily exact, methodologically rigorous, and commandingly timely, China and the Internet offers a welcome example of grounded research that scholars in media and development studies will do well to follow, regardless of their regional foci or preferences." - Briankle G. Chang (author of Deconstructing Communication: Subject, Representation, and Economies of Exchange)

Two oversimplified narratives have long dominated news reports and academic studies of China’s Internet: one lauding its potentials to boost commerce, the other bemoaning state control and measures against the forces of political transformations. This bifurcation obscures the complexity of the dynamic forces operating on the Chinese Internet and the diversity of Internet-related phenomena. China and the Internet analyzes how Chinese activists, NGOs, and government offices have used the Internet to fight rural malnutrition, the digital divide, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other urgent problems affecting millions of people. It presents five theoretically informed case studies of how new media have been used in interventions for development and social change, including how activists battled against COVID-19. In addition, this book applies a Communication for Development approach to examine the use and impact of China’s Internet. Although it is widely used internationally in Internet studies, Communication for Development has not been rigorously applied in studies of China’s Internet. This approach offers a new perspective to examine the Internet and related phenomena in Chinese society.