• List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction
• 1. Online Activism in an Age of Contention
• 2. The Politics of Digital Contention
• 3. The Rituals and Genres of Contention
• 4. The Changing Style of Contention
• 5. The Business of Digital Contention
• 6. Civic Associations Online
• 7. Utopian Realism in Online Communities
• 8. Transnational Activism Online Conclusion: China's Long Revolution Notes Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Despite efforts to control these activities, online activism has been an agent of immense social change, allowing common citizens to disseminate content and openly challenge the authority of political and economic elites. Guobin Yang's pioneering study follows the rise of this dynamic protest and the forces that keep it relevant and unique. Online activism encompasses an innovative range of rituals, genres, and styles, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Internet businesses have encouraged these contentious activities, generating an unusual synergy between capitalism and civil organizations that sponsor critique. Based on ten years of meticulous research and grounded in theories of social movements and the public sphere, Yang's study emphasizes the mutual shaping of technology and society and highlights the important role of a transnational diaspora in the making of a Chinese Internet culture. In conclusion, Yang argues that online activism reflects important structural changes in contemporary China and points to a new era of informational politics.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Guobin Yang's pioneering study maps an innovative range of contentious forms and practices linked to Chinese cyberspace, delineating a nuanced and dynamic image of the Chinese Internet as an arena for creativity, community, conflict, and control. Like many other contemporary protest forms in China and the world, Yang argues, Chinese online activism derives its methods and vitality from multiple and intersecting forces, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Transnationalism and the tradition of protest in China's incipient civil society provide cultural and social resources to online activism. Even Internet businesses have encouraged contentious activities, generating an unusual synergy between commerce and activism. Yang's book weaves these strands together to create a vivid story of immense social change, indicating a new era of informational politics.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction
• Online activism in an age of contention
• The politics of digital contention
• The rituals and genres of contention
• The changing style of contention
• The business of digital contention
• Civic associations online
• Utopian realism in online communities
• Transnational activism online
• Conclusion: China's long revolution
• Afterword to the paperback edition.

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Guobin Yang's pioneering study maps an innovative range of contentious forms and practices linked to Chinese cyberspace, delineating a nuanced and dynamic image of the Chinese Internet as an arena for creativity, community, conflict, and control. Like many other contemporary protest forms in China and the world, Yang argues, Chinese online activism derives its methods and vitality from multiple and intersecting forces, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Transnationalism and the tradition of protest in China's incipient civil society provide cultural and social resources to online activism. Even Internet businesses have encouraged contentious activities, generating an unusual synergy between commerce and activism. Yang's book weaves these strands together to create a vivid story of immense social change, indicating a new era of informational politics.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Notes on Data Acknowledgments Introduction
• 1. Violence in Chongqing
• 2. Flowers of the Nation
• 3. Theory and Dissent
• 4. Ordinary Life
• 5. Underground Culture
• 6. New Enlightenment
• 7. Factionalized Memories Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Raised to be "flowers of the nation, " the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its political outlook and at first embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966, but then split into warring factions. Investigating the causes of this fracture, Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government. Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages, where they developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life. From this experience, an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, these relocated revolutionaries developed a new form of resistance that signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang's final chapter on the politics of history and memory argues that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along these lines of political division, formed fifty years before.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Notes on Data Acknowledgments Introduction
• 1. Violence in Chongqing
• 2. Flowers of the Nation
• 3. Theory and Dissent
• 4. Ordinary Life
• 5. Underground Culture
• 6. New Enlightenment
• 7. Factionalized Memories Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Raised to be "flowers of the nation, " the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its political outlook and at first embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966, but then split into warring factions. Investigating the causes of this fracture, Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government. Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages, where they developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life. From this experience, an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, these relocated revolutionaries developed a new form of resistance that signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang's final chapter on the politics of history and memory argues that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along these lines of political division, formed fifty years before.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Is there a pre-Weibo and post-Weibo era in Chinese Internet history? Are hackerspaces in China the same as in the West? How can the censorship of an Internet novel end up "producing" it? How is Lu Xun's passive and ignorant spectator turned into an activist on the Internet? What are the multiple ways of being political online? Such intriguing questions are the subject of this captivating new book. Its ten chapters combine first-hand research with multi-disciplinary perspectives to offer original insights on the fast-changing landscape of the Chinese Internet. Other topics studied include online political consultation, ethnic identity and racial contestation in cyberspace, and the Southern Weekly protest in 2013. In addition, the editor's introduction highlights the importance of understanding the depth of people's experiences and institutional practices with a historical sensibility.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Is there a pre-Weibo and post-Weibo era in Chinese Internet history? Are hackerspaces in China the same as in the West? How can the censorship of an Internet novel end up "producing" it? How is Lu Xun's passive and ignorant spectator turned into an activist on the Internet? What are the multiple ways of being political online? Such intriguing questions are the subject of this captivating new book. Its ten chapters combine first-hand research with multi-disciplinary perspectives to offer original insights on the fast-changing landscape of the Chinese Internet. Other topics studied include online political consultation, ethnic identity and racial contestation in cyberspace, and the Southern Weekly protest in 2013. In addition, the editor's introduction highlights the importance of understanding the depth of people's experiences and institutional practices with a historical sensibility.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction: The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China -Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, and Guobin Yang
• Chapter 1: The Coevolution of the Internet, (Un)Civil Society, and Authoritarianism in China -Min Jiang
• Chapter 2: Connectivity, Engagement, and Witnessing on China's Weibo -Marina Svensson
• Chapter 3: New Media Empowerment and State-Society Relations in China -Shi and Guobin Yang
• Chapter 4: The Privilege of Speech in New Media: Conceptualizing China's Communications Law in the Internet Age -Rogier Creemers
• Chapter 5: Embedding Law into Politics in China's Networked Public Sphere -Ya-Wen Lei and Daniel Xiaodan Zhou
• Chapter 6: Microbloggers' Battle for Legal Justice in China -Anne S. Y. Cheung
• Chapter 7: Public Opinion and Chinese Foreign Policy: New Media and Old Puzzles -Dalei Jie
• Chapter 8: Social Media, Nationalist Protests, and China's Japan Policy: The Diaoyu Islands Controversy, 2012-13 -Peter Gries, Derek Steiger, and Wang Tao
• Chapter 9: Going Out and Texting Home: New Media and China's Citizens Abroad -James Reilly
• Chapter 10: Images of the DPRK in China's New Media: How Foreign Policy Attitudes Are Connected to Domestic Ideologies in China -Chuanjie Zhang
• Notes List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The Internet and social media are pervasive and transformative forces in contemporary China. Nearly half of China's 1.3 billion citizens use the Internet, and tens of millions use Sina Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter or Facebook. Recently, Weixin/Wechat has become another major form of social media. While these services have allowed regular people to share information and opinions as never before, they also have changed the ways in which the Chinese authorities communicate with the people they rule. China's party-state now invests heavily in speaking to Chinese citizens through the Internet and social media, as well as controlling the speech that occurs in that space. At the same time, those authorities are wary of the Internet's ability to undermine the ruling party's power, organize dissent, or foment disorder. Nevertheless, policy debates and public discourse in China now regularly occur online, to an extent unimaginable a decade or two ago, profoundly altering the fabric of China's civil society, legal affairs, internal politics, and foreign relations. The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China explores the changing relationship between China's cyberspace and its society, politics, legal system, and foreign relations. The chapters focus on three major policy areas-civil society, the roles of law, and the nationalist turn in Chinese foreign policy-and cover topics such as the Internet and authoritarianism, "uncivil society" online, empowerment through new media, civic engagement and digital activism, regulating speech in the age of the Internet, how the Internet affects public opinion, legal cases, and foreign policy, and how new media affects the relationship between Beijing and Chinese people abroad. Contributors: Anne S. Y. Cheung, Rogier Creemers, Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, Peter Gries, Min Jiang, Dalei Jie, Ya-Wen Lei, James Reilly, Zengzhi Shi, Derek Steiger, Marina Svensson, Wang Tao, Guobin Yang, Chuanjie Zhang, Daniel Xiaodan Zhou.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)