Taking off at the height of China's socio-economic reforms in the mid-1990s, the Internet developed alongside the twists and turns of the country's rapid transformation. Central to many aspects of social change, the Internet has played an indispensable role in the decentralization of political communication, the expansion of the market, and the stratification of society in China.

Through three empirical cases - online privacy, cyber-nationalism, and the network market - this book traces how different social actors engage in negotiating the practices, social relations, and power structures that define these evolving institutions in Chinese society. Examining rich user-generated social media data with innovative methods such as semantic network analysis and topic modelling, The Web of Meaning provides a solid empirical base to critique the power relationships that are embedded in the very fibre of Chinese society.

About the Author
Elaine Jingyan Yuan is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at University of Illinois, Chicago.

Reviews

"As internet studies in China become more deeply embedded into China's social and economic domains, it becomes harder for scholars to find new approaches that can tackle and analyse the internet as a whole. Yuan's book makes a great contribution by presenting China's internet as discursive fields that are embedded in the very fibre of Chinese society."

-- Ping Sun * China Quarterly *


Awards
Winner of 2022 Outstanding Book Award of the Asian/Pacific American Studies Division of the National Communication Association 2022 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781487508135
Author Elaine Jingyan Yuan
Format Hardback
Page Count 200
Imprint University of Toronto Press
Publisher University of Toronto Press
Weight(grams) 430g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 159mm * 18mm