Визуальный Интернет-юмор, как фактор
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Chapter 2. The Internet as a Weak Public Sphere: Features, Regulations and the Adaptation to the Chinese Context
- Characteristics of the Chinese Internet infrastructure and cyberspace-regulating laws
- Table 1. Number of Internet users in China
Downey and Mihelj put under question the universality of Habermas understanding of public sphere referring to it as only one of the three possible types, a deliberative one. Apart from this they also mention liberal representative public sphere, where the participation of citizens in the political discussion is only inevitable at the stage of choosing the representatives whose further mission would be dealing with everyday political problems and on whose authoritative opinion the citizens would rely. The third type is participatory liberal public sphere, where full engagement of citizens in the political debate is paramount, which in other words means ‘the poor and weak should not be spoken for but should be themselves speakers in the debate and present in making decisions’ [17; 339]. Based on the analysis of the citizens’ opinion representation in the printed media in Germany, France, Slovenia, Switzerland, the UK and the USA, they distinguish these three groups. Thus they show how countries with different political background may derive a specific type of public sphere different from Habermas’ deliberative model. Although the research mentioned above makes an attempt to widen the boundaries of the public sphere concept and challenges its interpretation by Habermas, it is still based on the printed media and does not pay attention to the more widespread, fast-developing and therefore becoming more and more significant field of Internet media. However, this study gives us a hint about the possibility to consider Chinese political administration a model with its own specific type of public sphere stipulated by the historical conditions of its development. Habemas’ concept of public sphere undoubtedly needs re-thinking when applied to the contemporary context and to the context of China, which did not follow the European example of democratization. The topic of the potential ways of public sphere development at the stage of information technologies domination in the modern society is quite popular in the social science literature now. However, authors have not come to the mutual decision about the possible influences of digital media and its commercialization on the public sphere. Peter Boeder, considers the concept of public sphere in its essence a virtual structure, which means that abstractization caused by the active development of the virtual space cannot threaten the existence of the public sphere, on the contrary, it enhances its power [34]. However, the author leaves it unclear in which exact way the cyberspace enhances public spheres. West does not seem to have positive overview on the problem of emerging public spheres thanks to the Internet. He sees two necessary features that could make any medium for communication a public sphere: the ability to form public opinion through communication in a particular medium, and the presence of a certain force of law given to this medium, that is, the ability of the medium to influence the power holders by law [30]. Although the main purpose of public sphere is to direct the government in the desirable direction, under the ideal circumstances the public sphere should also have power to compel the government if they are not willing to follow the desirable direction, which does not seem to be the case of China. West considers any attempts to call the Internet a ‘new public sphere’ only a temptation, as the Internet opinion does not have any considerable weight and influence on the governments granted legally. However, as it was stated above, we consider the concept of public sphere in Habermas’ sense as a normative one, so the lack of legal power for the Internet can be counted as a special feature of a new public sphere type. The most detailed close-up on the Chinese public sphere problem is presented in the work of Liu and McCormick [24], where they investigate the problem of emerging public sphere in its interconnection with the commercialization of media. The main thesis they make is that the Chinese public sphere being ‘monopolistic’ before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, has gained the characteristics of a ‘pluralistic’ one thanks to the commercialization of media. During the epoch of active propaganda in the first thirty years of the PRC, the media worked as a main instrument for bringing the Party’s ideas to the masses. The following in the 80’s reforms of state-owned enterprises unintentionally influenced the media institutions and triggered the process of letting in ‘the voices of different social groups’ [24; 106]. The basis of this process was rooted in the introduction of enterprise management and cutting off the state financial support which made the media-related companies to a great extent dependent on the consumers’ choices. Following the increase of purchasing power among the citizens and as a result the growing demand for cultural and entertainment services, the content of the media started to change. Although the authors point out the positive change in the official party course concerning the media during Zhao Ziyang’s chairmanship when the control of media was claimed to shift from ideological to administrative one, Tiananmen Square events put the media again in the position of ‘party’s mouthpiece’. Soon after that, however, the Party officially admitted the commercial nature of the media, which allowed more space for widening the scope of media content. Liu and McCormick use the term ‘state-market complex’ to describe the position of the media since 1992, particularly, the state of balancing between the demands of the propaganda on the one hand and the demands of the consumers on the other while being fully state-independent financially. The need for economic gains forced the media turn to the daily-life issues and entertainment, while the state transformed its propaganda content so as to adapt better to the consumers’ demands. The main changes in the media discourse the authors point out are domination of entertainment in the media market, a greater value of private over public issues, indirect control of the Party through deciding over the leading leitmotifs in the choice of topics, and widening space for alternative perspectives. Liu and McCormick consider the implication of the Habermasian public sphere concept to the Chinese context as requiring special attention. By the public sphere in the sense Habermas meant it they imply ‘a social domain between the state and civil society, where private people come together as a public and engage in critical-rational discussions about private but publicly relevant matters, especially with regard to the general rules of a civil society’ [24; 112]. Considering the fact that Habermas did not claim the exclusivity of the type of the public sphere he described in his major work, they suggest treating this concept as a normative one and implying that there exists a possibility for the formation of different types of public spheres. Given the popular point of critique of Habermas’ theory, which is the relation of the concept of public sphere to the historical events in Europe and the US and as a consequence impossibility of its application to China, Liu and McCormick argue that as a normative model incorporating ideals such as open and reasoned debate, it is perfectly applicable in the Chinese context. They give the following interpretation of it: ‘we define public sphere as a social realm where public discourses are structurally situated, allocated, regulated, and circulated’ [24; 115]. Referring to Richard Madsen’s ideas [25] they suggest that Chinese democratic movements ‘seem to be seeking a form of life in which authority is accountable to common norms based on widespread, open, rational discussion among citizens’ [24; 115]. From the point of view the authors adopted concerning the concept of public sphere, Liu and McCormick point out that the type of the Chinese public sphere created by the CCP during the era of Mao can be described as monopolistic in a sense that the ideals the public sphere pursued were set by the Party and were presented as ultimate truth. This type of public sphere did imply engagement in rational discussions about private matters in their connection to the public ones, however, given the strict rules and specific formulas speakers should have followed in their discussions, the monopolistic public sphere in China in no way encouraged public participation in solving the problems of administration. The role of intellectuals during that period was quite specific: to provide intellectual support to the ideology strengthening its status of ultimate truth. This resulted in critique of the public administration problems becoming an attribute of private realm. Liu and McCormick argue that the beginning of commercialization process after the economic reforms of Deng brought several significant changes to the existing type of public sphere, namely, the Party lost its monopoly over the production of public discourse, the public sphere became diverse with more actors participating, and the number of opportunities for opinion expression increased. The key feature of the current public sphere, according to Liu and McCormick, is the adapted style of the party’s ideology which followed the commercialization of media. While the most commercially beneficial content is focused on consumption-oriented popular culture, the authorities had to ‘trade off’ political control for the commercial success of the media. The growing amount of media content has become less accessible for thorough control, and the support of party ideology has lost its attractiveness for the intellectuals as it ceased to guarantee better financial rewarding. Along with the positive changes initiated by the commercialization of media, Liu and McCormick express certain concern over the possibility of these changes to lead to democratization of the media sphere. Following Habermas, Benjamin, Horkheimer and Adorno, Liu and McCormick agree that the ‘formerly reasoned debate of the liberal public sphere would be replaced by the consumption of entertainment’ [24; 127]. The entering of the private into what is supposed to be public (as it happens in the process named by Colin Sparks ‘tabloidization’ [27; 29]) can become a cause of political passivity, and the critical commentary will be discouraged from developing in the media due to unpopularity. Some Chinese scholars see a positive impact in the growth of popular culture claiming that it increases political and social tolerance [32]. Other researchers suggest that regardless of the extent of commercialization, the media in post-reform China is not likely to represent a purely pro-party or pro-democratic attitude, as it tends to both present the state in a bright light and expose the problems of the government such as corruption. Liu and McCormick see the commercialization and de-politicization of the media as a very politicized process. They claim that this process has laid the basis for changing the self-identification of people who, as a result of Mao’s teachings cultivation, used to associate themselves with the collective ‘I’ implying the state itself. Commercialization and, consequently, the cultivation of ‘private’ matters in media has started the process of realization of their private interests and identities among the Chinese. Taking into account that the Habermasian normative model of public sphere implies the existence of private people ‘who could voluntarily come together to form a public’ [24; 130] for a meaningful discussion, the process described above is likely to facilitate democratization in case of China. The paper of Liu and McCormick gives a reasonable interpretation of the impact of commercialization on the development of the public sphere in the direction towards democratization from the point of view of Habermas’ theory. However, speaking about the ‘media’ the authors imply newspapers, magazines and the television, and do not pay considerable attention to the role of the Internet as a form of media. If we take into account social networks and news portals which allow free commenting, one key conclusion of the authors seems doubtful. According to Liu and McCormick, the commercialization tends to direct people’s concentration towards their immediate private issues distracting them from politics. This leads to citizens (who are by definition ‘willing and able to engage in public discussions of politics’ [24; 131]) becoming politically passive consumers of entertaining content. In case of social networks, however, where the consumers of information are free to become at the same time the producers of information, and who are often referred to as ‘netizens’, the public sphere integrated in the virtual space of the network is created and shaped by the netizens themselves, who through their updates concerning private matters and preferences reflect and discuss the public matters connected to the reality. Taylor suggests another definition of public sphere, quite different from the popular definition of Habermas: ‘The public sphere is a common space in which the members of society are deemed to meet through a variety of media: print, electronic, and also face-to-face encounters; to discuss matters of common interest; thus to be able to form a common mind about these’ [29; 83]. Rational discussion over the topics of common interest which is lead among all the members of society that is considered to be a unified group is in the center of Taylor’s interpretation of the concept. For Taylor it is crucial that all the members of the society need to come to a consensus about the topics under discussion and not just aggregate their opinions. According to Taylor’s perspective, there are three statuses which are characteristic of a public sphere: extrapolitical, secular and metatopical space [29; 83-99]. Extrapolitical status refers to the dominance of reason and absence of traditional authority or any other political power in the process of ideas exchange within the public sphere. Under secular status Taylor implies the lack of a transcendental idea behind the fundamental element of the public sphere, which implies a free will of the participants to be the basis of the formation of the public sphere. Metatopical space is referred to as a common space of understanding between the participants. Keane’s definition of public sphere is more descriptive than conceptual, as for him a public sphere is ‘a particular type of spatial relationship between two or more people, usually connected by a certain means of communication [...], in which non-violent controversies erupt, for a brief or more extended period of time, concerning the power relations operating within their milieu of interaction and/or within the wider milieux of social and political structures within which the disputants are situated’ [22; 77]. According to the theory of Keane, public sphere is not a common space, but a combination of spaces, with each of them having their own information flows and working according to their own principles. Keane distinguishes public spheres by their scale and defines three types: micro (sub-cultural; up to thousands of people at a sub-national level), meso (national; millions of people at the level of state regions and states) and macro (global level). Another descriptive definition is provided by Fraser. She refers to a public sphere as ‘Parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs’ [19; 123]. The main points of her critique of Habermas are presupposed societal inequality, unity of a public sphere and lack of any inner competition within it, the focus of the rational discussions on the common good, and total independence of the public sphere from the state. Through her discussion of the conditions under which the existence of Habermasian public sphere is possible, she shows how far from the reality the model is. According to Fraser, a participatory parity is achievable when there are several public spheres, so as the privileges of higher-status social groups (relating to gender, origin, etc.) are counterbalanced. Koçan considers her definition as shifting from ‘a more static institutional perspective to complex and fragmented multiplicities which work as communicative arenas for hermeneutical self-understanding, for recognition of new complex of issues and for competitive discussions which are directed towards shaping public opinions and criticizing the state policies’ [41; 10]. For better explanation Fraser suggests a classification of two types of public spheres: weak and strong. A strong public sphere is fully independent from the state and plays certain role in the decision-making, while weak public spheres are engaged in the discussion but are not considered as decision-making agents. Thus, Fraser’s interpretation of the concept excludes the possibility of full dominance of state or commercial interests in the formation and shaping of the public sphere, and, although being targeted at the late-capitalist societies, allows space for the emerging of public spheres even in autocratic regimes. In the light of cultural differences and the differences in political tradition, an additional classification of models of public spheres is suggested by Koçan, that is, end-oriented and act-oriented public spheres. For end-oriented public spheres it is crucial to play a decisive role in achieving political objectives. For the act-oriented public spheres the main goal is existence of the public sphere itself, such public spheres provide a space for communication and public opinion formation, but are not presupposed to play an active role in decision making. For understanding the public sphere in China and choosing the appropriate theoretical framework for its assessment, it is necessary to keep in mind the Chinese cultural background and political tradition. As the Emperor was believed to hold the Mandate of Heaven, it was thought, according to Confucian ethics, to be inappropriate to criticize the higher power. This did not apply to the officials, especially those of lower ranks, however, there was no common physical space for discussions in the imperial China, moreover, the commoners were not supposed to take active part in the decision-making process, as this responsibility fell fully on the officials’ shoulders, and therefore the only ways of expressing criticism was through literature and arts. Thus, the public sphere was passive. On the other hand, as the new attempts to interpret Confucian ethics in the framework of democracy are undertaken, the scholars deny the principal contradiction between the traditional Confucian thinking and democratic ideals [16; 1], however, the Cunfucian ethics still does not imply the active participation of people in the decision making. The model of Fraser would be therefore more applicable in this case than others, as the public sphere possible in the conditions of Confucian society is, in her classification, weak. We will use this model for the characterization of Internet social networks in China (which will be done in the following chapter) and the interpretation of the results of empirical part of this study. Taking all the mentioned above into account, preliminary conclusions for Chapter 1 can be made: 1) Commercialization of media and emergence of new types of communication techniques on the one hand, reoriented media from serious topics to entertainment, on the other hand, devaluated the importance of media as a mouthpiece of people; 2) in case of China, where media has never been fully a representation of public opinion, commercialization has not even let media develop as a representation of people, but rather became a mouthpiece of the Party; 3) public sphere, which according to its basic definition of Habermas, has mass media as one of its bases, and therefore cannot be considered to be well-developed, or even existing in China; 4) Nancy Fraser’s theory, which implies simultaneous existence of several public spheres, can be implied to the Chinese context most successfully, and it does not put into controversy the commercialization of mass media, emergence of Internet as alternative media and the tendency to concentration on entertainment in mass media. If Internet society is considered a separate public sphere as opposed to other public spheres, it can be also considered a platform for rational discussion combined with entertainment. Chapter 2. The Internet as a Weak Public Sphere: Features, Regulations and the Adaptation to the Chinese Context As it was concluded in the previous chapter, the Chinese tradition of public sphere is likely to determine the character of the current public sphere – from the perspective of Fraser’s classification the Chinese public sphere can be regarded as weak. This chapter will explore if the real situation in the Chinese public sphere falls under the definition of Fraser’s ‘weak’, and what role in the Chinese public sphere the Internet and social networks, such as Weibo, play. The chapter will progress from the statistical data concerning special features of the Internet in China, which is aimed to outline the real conditions and possible potential of the existing social networks for facilitating the existence of public spheres. The history of Internet in China dates back to 1986 when the first email was sent from Beijing Information Control Institute [36]. The first set of web pages in China was launched in 1994, and January 1996 can be considered the beginning of nationwide Internet services in China with the first backbone network provider CHINANET starting its work. In June 30, 2008 China became the country with the largest number of Internet users in the world and has been keeping this position till nowadays [37]. Characteristics of the Chinese Internet infrastructure and cyberspace-regulating laws Every year China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) publishes Statistical Reports on Internet Development in China (the Report). As it can be seen from Table 1, the number of Internet users has witnessed triple growth in the last six years, rising from 210 million people in the end of 2007 to 618 million people by the end of 2013. However the annual rate of growth was steadily decreasing from 2007 to 2012, and the tendency to stabilization of growth rate can be seen in the last two years. After the rapid increase of the number of Internet users in 2008 and 2009 by 42% and 29% respectively, which can be considered a peak time of Internet spread in China, the slowdown of the growth rates is natural and is explained by the considerable coverage of Internet in urban areas (as it will be shown further in the paper) and very limited coverage of rural areas (where roughly half of the population of China lives). Certain attention should be paid to the number of mobile Internet users, whose number amounted to 81% of all Internet users in the end of 2013, increasing dramatically in the previous 5 years from the percentage of 24%, which can be explained by the rapid development of smart phone and tablets industry and the improvement of mobile Internet infrastructure. The high percentage of mobile Internet users is an indicator of the users’ growing appreciation of the immediateness of information exchange, as the mobile devices allow instant messaging, rapid transferring of news and higher speed of updating information about the changes of situations eliminating the condition of staying in the same place in the process of Internet using.
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