Description:
The Chinese internet is driving change across all facets of social life, and scholars have grown mindful that online and offline spaces have become interdependent and inseparable dimensions of social, political, economic, and cultural activity. This book showcases the richness and diversity of Chinese cyberspaces, conceptualizing online and offline China as separate but inter-connected spaces in which a wide array of people and groups act and interact. The book argues that online spaces allow their users greater "freedoms" despite ubiquitous control and surveillance by the state authorities. The book is a sequel to the editors' earlier work, Online Society in China (Routledge, 2011).
Review Quotes:
'...this book offers a sense of freshness in dealing with Chinese internet studies that eschews the dogmatic paradigms often found in current literature by proposing a new conceptualization of Chinese internet users as well as an ethnographic 'everyday-life-approach' to the field of study.'
Giuseppe Minacapilli, East China Normal University, Asiascape: Digital Asia