The Web of Meaning: the Internet in a changing Chinese society

Zoom Webinar Talk by Dr. Elaine Yuan, the University of Illinois at Chicago, in the Tech in Movement (TiM) serial talks.

Moderator: Jun Liu, Department of Communication.

Programme

Abstract

The Web of Meaning examines the dynamics and implications of the discursive reproduction of social institutions in contemporary China through three empirical cases – network privacy, cyber-nationalism, and the online market. Unfolding in sociotechnological contexts mediated by the Internet, the changes in these social institutions take place along the evolving relations between the private and the public, between various social groups vis-à-vis the nation-state, and across the various sites of production and consumption. Enabling new networked spaces, symbolic resources, and forms of sociality, the Internet as a symbolic space has altered the cultural politics of public visibility, voice, and power in these multiple and heterogenous sites while simultaneously being shaped by the new constellations of forces and practices in these sites. The book concludes with a discussion about how new ways of organizing the symbolic space both challenge and complicate the Habermasian public sphere model.

Speaker bio

Elaine Yuan, Ph.D. in MTS at Northwestern University, is an associate professor in the communication department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how new and emerging forms of communication mediate various social institutions and cultural practices. She has researched extensively on questions regarding network communication, social media, digital platforms, and cultural processes of change. Elaine’s work has appeared in many leading journals in the field of communication including Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Information, Communication, & Society, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Journalism Studies. Her research has been funded by U.S. Social Science Research Council, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, UIC Institute for Public Civic Engagement, and UIC Institute for the Humanities. Her current project on the impact of disinformation on the political mobilization of the Chinese immigrant community in the US is funded by UIC Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy.

The event is free, but please sign up to get the Zoom link.