The Internet-based visual humor as text representative of the state of the Chinese public sphere

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru

Introduction

The problem of freedom of expression in China has been topical since the times of Tian'anmen events of 1989, when the truth about the protests was successfully concealed. Since then the liberal journalists of the West (and by the West we mean here the USA and Europe) have been quite persistent in their search for grassroots political activity in China. With the Introduction of Web 2.0 method of Internet pages development, which introduced interactivity to the cyberspace: Web 2.0 allows commenting, editing and adding information by the users anonymously. However, China has found a way to, again, quite successfully control this type of platform, namely, online censorship. While technically textual analysis has been developed well in the years of Internet introduction which allows quick censorship, the technical side of automatic visual analysis is not quite well-developed yet. This and the increasing affordability of digital cameras and image editing software has made images the most popular content on the Internet, and moreover, this made images a tool for broadening the space for free expression under the conditions of censored cyberspace. The images acquired the immediate nature, became more linked to the time and place where they were taken, and therefore, more embedded in the context, as well as presenting some kind of content. These two characteristics of images - content and context - have now become the main object of anthropological interest. Favero argues that the new technologies `modify our ways of relating to and addressing the visual field', as the world has witnessed the emergence of new `image-making communication practices'. New technologies enable the `translation of visions and abstract ideas into physical items', as `each image carries on a surplus of meaning made up by its spatialization, its materialization of movement and memory, its insertion into a variety of maps, networks and relations'. This is the reason for choosing this topic for development.

The rationale of the research is based on the growing interest of the public to the freedom of speech and democratic movement problems in China, which, being a powerful player on the international arena, is often accused of violation of human rights and freedoms. While not being able to express themselves freely, netizens find different ways of avoiding the censorship, and images is one of these ways. The study of images may reveal information about the trends in the Chinese Internet society, Chinese popular culture, and moreover, public opinion about politically sensitive issues. These peculiarities determine the interdisciplinarity of the paper, which, on the one hand, will look at the sociological aspects of the Chinese public sphere, on the other hand, will incorporate cultural studies knowledge.

The chronological borders were determined as 2013 - 2014. It can seem to be a very short period for investigation, however, since our attention is focused on the Internet content and the speed of updating information on the Internet is enormous, it would be hard to find to find data for analysis as web pages are refreshed very often, and it would also be extremely hard to systematize the huge amounts of information available.

For the examination of the visual content the following methodology was adopted:

1) Nancy Fraser's concept of weak and strong public spheres, which are, according to her, independent and can be in conflict with each other, incorporate different social groups and have different purposes: from influencing the government and taking part in decision making to existing for the sake of existence.

2) Postmodernist understanding of images as texts. Postmodernist paradigm allowed the shift from verbal text to a visual one, as an image is considered a text, too. The visual anthropology looks for the meanings in the form of visual representation as well as the conditions under which this particular form of representation was chosen. As Yarskaya points out, visual anthropology is at the moment more focused on the activity providing the 'dialog of cultures'. A camera easily turns a viewer into a creator, and as an ordinary citizen takes a camera in their hands, the camera becomes a tool for expression of the needs and demands of this particular individual or a group, to which this individual belongs. This element of participation is what becomes a focus of a scholar's attention, as the product of such a participatory image-producing activity is the representation of the social processes of the contemporary reality. And therefore for the analysis of visual materials it is crucial to define the knowledge that is necessary for the understanding of the situation captured in the image.

Sztompka points out that from the point of view of dominant cultural features three successive historical epochs can be distinguished: oral, verbal, and visual. Oral epoch is characterized by the dominance of oral communication, which greatly limits the circle of possible communicators as they have to be close to each other. During the second epoch the circle of possible participants of the communication widened, as the recording of oral information enabled storing and transmitting the data. With the oncoming of visual epoch an image, visual representation has gained greater significance in transmitting the information, knowledge, emotions, esthetic perception and values. Images can influence not only the consciousness, but also the unconscious.

This transition has become possible thanks to new media and the Internet technologies. In total, there have been three turning points in the process of new cultural epoch establishment: the invention of photography, which enabled the multiplication and zooming of images; the invention of a copy machine, which enabled the massive multiplication of the same image; and finally the invention of electronic registration, copying and moving of images with the help of television, computers and later Internet technologies. The last stage has broken the limitations of space and time, and has embedded an image into the urban environment, so that the visual perception has become an integral part, if not a replacement, of the textual perception. This domination of visual images has resulted in the formation of new ways of thinking and new ways of exploring the world. Sztompka even sees in the process of image domination a return of the cultures to the 'primitive pre-linguistic communities' in the West, but considers this process more or less natural for the Eastern cultures with ideographic writing system, which includes China.

However, sociology of the postmodernist society admits the unequal spread of the visual among the communities, which can be explained by the difference in the perception due to different cultural background, as it is considered that every culture predetermines the specificity of perception . According to Hall, different strain on vision, hearing and smelling in different cultures created by people, leads to absolutely different perception of space and absolutely different relations between the people, as `every culture creates its own perceptual worlds'. There is also a factor of different conventional amount of visual content in a particular context pre-determined by its functions, such as political, familial, professional, entertaining, etc. In case of China, a culture with an ideographic writing system, the spread of visual is quite vast there, and the culture of visual expression is also well-developed. This allows us regard visual content posted on the Internet as representation of people`s opinion and analyze the former with the purpose of revealing the latter.

3) Theory of humor by Neuendorf, who argued it to be `an important additional filter through which individuals may view and cognitively process issues of contestation and importance'. According to Gong and Yang, comic effects are usually achieved through `recontextualization' and by `treating a low subject with mocking dignity' and, conversely, `handl[ing] serious situations in a trivial manner'. Another important characteristic of parody are: the self-entertainment, oriented and individual-based creation and consumption. Parody, or egao, serves also as a channel to vent his dissatisfaction with the established norms (the film, the social problems, etc.). As audiences laugh along, they identify with the critiques and laugh off their feelings of discontent as well. In a way, egao serves simultaneously as a means for critical expression and for emotional catharsis.

For the primary sources the following materials were taken:

1) China Digital Times (CDT) portal: an independent news portal, located in Berkeley, CA, which was established in 2003 as a blog and then grew into a big news-related organization. This paper used its section Drawing the News for picking up the most popular uncensored images 2013-2014 from Weibo for sampling. Only images with the logo of Weibo were taken for the analysis. It is unclear, though, what the choice of images for the section is based on, there are no evidence of the number of reposts in the pages.

2) ProPublica project: 'an independent non-profit newsroom that produced investigative journalism in the public interest'. The organization is based in NY. The newsroom won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. The newsroom launched a project of tracking the deleted Weibo posts and registering them on July 24, 2013, and finished the project on August 4, 2013. The methodology they used was based on the double-response system, when the script they created checked the presence of a post by finding it, and then by receiving their response in an hour. As a result of the project 524 deleted images were revealed and presented on the website. For our sample we only picked those of them which contained humorous images.

3) WeiboScope: a data collection and visualization project based in the University of Hong Kong. It does the same thing as ProPublica project: gathers responses from the posts of a group of users having the biggest number of followers. Before May 2014 Weiboscope showed the popular images in Weibo, but starting from May 2014 it has only shown the deleted posts. Therefore only the deleted posts of humorous content published firstly in the period May 28, 2014 - June 02, 2014, were taken for the analysis.

4) The Internet in China, white paper published in 2010 by the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China as a reaction to the Google's actions in China after the company revealed the violation of private accounts by the Chinese censorship office.

5) National People's Congress Standing Committee Decision concerning Strengthening Network Information Protection: a legal document published on December 28, 2012 on the website of the government: www.npc.gov.cn.

6) List of Violations, Microblogging Community Management Regulations (Trial): part of Terms of Use document basic for the registration on the microblogging service Weibo.

7) Decree of the State Council of the People's Republic of China (No. 292): a legal document published September 25, 2000; the text is open at the website of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China: http://www.mps.gov.cn.

8) Survey Reports of China Internet Network Information Center: statistical data presented in a form of yearbook, with main information on traffic volumes, domain names, users statistics and content on the Internet. Free accessed at http://www1.cnnic.cn/.

The history of the topic development in academic circles cannot be said to be very rich. Partially it is due to the fact that Internet-mediated content has only recently started gaining popularity among visual anthropologists, partially because humor studies are still underdeveloped and the topic of Internet humor is still underestimated by the researches. The only significant work in this field is written by Haomin Gong and Xin Yang, who explore the impact of the Chinese digitized parody (иgao) on the development of means of political expression in China. By egao they mean `a form of parody, with a level of inevitable comic and satiric effects. Like other parodic practices, egao usually imitates the parodied texts, or blatantly transplants parts or all of them into an entirely different text or context. By so doing, they create ironic incongruity that triggers humor and laughter and form varying kinds of polemical relationships with the texts and/or matters that they satirize'. Through the analysis of a video parody … Gong and Yang stress the fact that the emergence of cyberspace has lead not only to the creation of new physical phenomena, but through paradoxical decentralization and personalization of the society gave a start to the formation of self-organized groups. At the same time the emergence of cyberspace was accompanied by the process of social re-stratification following the commercialization stage, which resulted in the cultural uncertainty and rise of the parody activities. The drawback of their article is its concentration on egao, which, although being a really popular genre of Internet activity, only refer to video products and do not include images.

The object of this study is the Internet-based visual humor as text representative of the state of the Chinese public sphere. The subject of the study is visual techniques and topics characteristic of the humorous images present in the medium of Chinese social networks.

The following hypothesis was proposed for the study: the expressive potential of Internet-mediated visual humor facilitates the establishment and active development of a separate Internet-based public sphere under the conditions of strict censorship policy.

To prove the hypothesis the following goal to identify the influence of Internet-based visual humor on the framing of public opinion and development of a separate Internet-based public sphere in China was set. The goal implies three research tasks:

1) Choose an appropriate theoretical framework for the characterization of the Chinese public sphere;

2) Examine the current state of Internet-based public sphere development in China;

3) Identify the visual code used for the expression of the opinion about politically-sensitive topics.

Statistic analysis, visual analysis including semiotic analysis, structural analysis and discursive analysis, content analysis as well as classification were used as main methods of study in the current research.

1. Public Sphere in China: Theoretical Basis, History and Reality

cyberspace social regulating

This chapter explores the theoretical framework of the concept of public sphere in the light of the possibility of its application to the context of China. The chapter outlines the main points of critique for different theories concerning the interpretation of the concept, provides a review of the main literature concerning this issue and substantiates the choice of Fraser's interpretation of the concept for the further application of it to the Chinese context.

The creation of the public sphere concept has a long history which dates back to as early as Aristotle, who described it as `public life constituted in spatial-temporal setting of market place where citizens as equals gather to discuss matters of common concern in polis'. This understanding of public sphere was prevailing in Europe until the Middle Ages, when the King or feudal lord represented the public, and when there public and private realms were no longer separated from each other. The context once more changed in the 17th-18th centuries when the public sphere started to emerge out of the private through discussions held in the bourgeois public. As Koзan comments on this point, `this public communication has a set of rules for exchange of points of view around issues of political concern. One main characteristics of this communication is that participants have a common interest in truth, which meant that they bracketed status differentials'. The concept of the public sphere gained popularity in the 20th century thanks to Jurgen Habermas who in his work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere stressed the political participation of the citizens as the inevitable component of the democracy again. According to Habermas, the main idea of the public sphere was in the existence of a medium between the private economic and social concerns of individuals and public concerns. Initially (in the epoch described by Habermas, i.e. European late 18th and 19th centuries) the public sphere involved organizations which managed the information and political debate, such as newspapers, and those which were legally ascribed the role of conducting political debate. Such as parliaments, political clubs, public assemblies, etc. The issues of general concern were openly discussed in the form of discursive argumentation, and therefore, as Kellner points out, the concept `presupposed freedoms of speech and assembly, a free press, and the right to freely participate in political debate and decision-making'. With the coming of commercialization the public sphere has become a medium of mass consumption dominated by corporations. In the capitalist epoch the corporations has undertaken the function of public opinion formation which would fit their private interests. The functions of the media have also changed from facilitating political debate and opinion expression to `shaping, constructing, and limiting public discourse to those themes validated and approved by media corporations'. In his critique of Habermas, Kellner, emphasizing the role of communication and language in power as means of manipulation and domination, argues that contemporary media has normative character and can to a great extent promote the progress in democracy development. Kellner notices that Habermas did not pay enough attention to the role of communication media such as the Internet in the public sphere functioning due to his concentration on the print media, and suggests that in the era of IT the new media technologies serve as a new basis for participatory democracy.

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'. 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. 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. 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, 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'. 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'. 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'. Referring to Richard Madsen's ideas 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'.

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'. The entering of the private into what is supposed to be public (as it happens in the process named by Colin Sparks `tabloidization') 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. 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' 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') 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'.

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. 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'. 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'. 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. Koзan 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'. 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 Koзan, 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, 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.

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. 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.

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.

Another piece of important information that can be learnt from the statistical data presented in the Report is the structure of users. Gender distribution of the Internet users has been stable through years 2009-2013, and amounts to 54-55% males and 45-46% females, which roughly correlates with the gender structure of the overall Chinese population. From the point of view of distribution of Internet among urban and rural population, it can be noticed that with the slight decrease in the percentage of rural population, the scope of Internet penetration in rural areas, although increasing twice, remains relatively low, while by 2013 the percentage of Internet users among urban population already exceeded 60%. As for the age structure , it can be seen from the graph that the most of the Internet-using population is aged 10 to 39, with maximum users being 20-29 years old.

As for social networking spread among the Internet users, the Report states that in 2013 (the year of our interest) 70.7% of users had their personal blogs, 45.5% used Microblog service (ОўІ«weibo, including Sina, Tencent, Baidu, Sohu and Netease), and 45% used social networking services. Overall through the years 2012-2013 there had been a slight slowdown on the development of social networking and microblogging, with less new users joining the networks where the real-name registration is required. In addition, there had been a decline in the activity of already registered users, with 22.8% microblog users reducing their activity in 2013, and 23.5% of users reducing the reducing their activity on the social networking websites. The report suggests the following explanations for the drop: the loss of freshness for the users among microbolog services and the rapid development of mobile applications with social networking features. The report also indicates 48.2% and 42%, utilization ratios for mobile phone applications with microblog and social networking functions respectively in 2012, and therefore it cannot be stated that social networks are losing their popularity, the users are just shifting to another platform following the growth of mobile Internet traffic. The top content for mobile Internet search in 2013, as in the previous years, is news (71% of browsed websites).

It should be noted that the Report suggests a clear correlation between the income and level of education and the utilization of social networking services among them. In particular, the higher the income of a user and the higher level of his/her education, the more it was probable for them to reduce their activity in the social networks in 2013. Taking into account that students prevail among other types of occupation typical for Internet users in China (amounting to 25.1% and 25.5% of all Internet users) and the fact5 that many of the surveyed explained the main reason of reducing their activity by describing such services as `a waste of time', the tendency to reduction of the network activity can be explained by the change in the status and social group of graduating students.

The statistical data gives us an approximate portrait of an average Internet user in China - they are with slightly higher probability a man aged 20-29, living in an urban area and having an education of junior high school level; he has a computer and a mobile phone with the function of Internet access, through which he searches latest updates about the current events and uses microblogging and social networking services. The growth in the number of Internet users and relatively stable structure peculiarities allow making an assumption that it is this group of population that is considered a target audience for the majority of the products introduced to the Internet, be it websites or mobile applications.

Leaving the behavior of users aside, the Report also provides some information about the popular type of multimedia content in the web pages, namely, images, music, video and text files. It is stated in the Report that the majority of multimedia content provided on the web pages of Chinese-domain websites is constituted of the files with .jpg and .gif extensions, which stands for the image (42.3% in 2013, 57% in 2012) and animated images (6.5% in 2013 and 37.6% in 2012) files. This proves that the images are still the leading multimedia content of websites.

Freedom of Speech Controversy.

The Chinese Internet regulations have long been scrutinized by the Western human rights organizations, activists and journalists. In addition to the existence of the Golden Shield Project (Quбnguу gфng'вn gфngzuт xмnxо huа gфngchйng) better know to the international public as Chinese Firewall, which blocks the use of foreign websites with certain types of content, such as Facebook.com, Twitter.com, etc., China implements inner censorship on the content published by the residents of China on the websites of Chinese domains. The main governmental organ in charge for the implementation and control over the newly introduced and existing regulations is Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and its provincial and local departments, and the CNNIC mentioned above is responsible for the research, development and security technologies provision to the Ministry. The decisions on the changes of Internet regulations are made by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

The main point of concern among the human rights activists have been the tightness of Internet censorship which has been imposed by the means of deletion of feeds and commentaries falling under the description of restricted topics which pose danger to the `harmonious' development of the Chinese society and Internet community. For the purposes of familiarization with the existing censorship regulations in China, it is quite useful to take a look at a white paper published on the website of the Central People's Government of the PRC.

The white paper titled The Internet in China giving an overview of the existing Internet regulations was published in June 2010. The introduction of the document states that the aim of the Chinese government is `to create a healthy and harmonious Internet environment, and build an Internet that is more reliable, useful and conducive to economic and social development'. The paper stresses the role of Internet in the technological and economic development of China, as well as in the `enhancing the capability of governance.'

According to this document, by the beginning of 2010 the number of users of the Internet in China was estimated as 384 million people, with 346 million using broadband and 233 million using mobile traffic. It is mentioned that the access to the Internet sources was not uniformly spread over the territory of the country, with twice as much people in eastern China enjoying access to the Internet as in the west (40% of the population against 21.5%), and almost three times as many people using the Internet in urban areas than in rural (72,2% against 27,8%).

The main idea of the white paper was, of course, not to present statistical data, but to make clear the information administration and security regulations introduced by the government, and to a great extent it refers to the freedom of speech and information (data) security controversy brought up by Google.cn in January 2010. After a massive cyber-attack on Google accounts, the company has stopped following the censorship regulations of the Chinese government. As it was written in the official blog of Google, there was `evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists `, which motivated the US-based executives of the company to reconsider the problem of censoring. As a result, the Chinese white paper stated that `Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China confers on Chinese citizens the right to free speech. With their right to freedom of speech on the Internet protected by the law, they can voice their opinions in various ways on the Internet. <…> The Chinese government is determined to unswervingly safeguard the freedom of speech on the Internet enjoyed by Chinese citizens in accordance with the law'. The paper proceeds with the clarification of the legal aspects of Internet activity, and states that `no organization or individual may utilize telecommunication networks to engage in activities that jeopardize state security, the public interest or the legitimate rights and interests of other people. <…> The Decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee <…> clearly prohibit the spread of information that contains contents subverting state power, undermining national unity, infringing upon national honor and interests, inciting ethnic hatred and secession, advocating heresy, pornography, violence, terror and other information that infringes upon the legitimate rights and interests of others'. It is obvious that according to the Chinese law, any activity of Chinese human rights activists is regarded as illegal, as any production, duplication and dissemination of certain types of content is prohibited. The list of types of such activities was also introduced in the white paper: