ContextofNetworkedPublic.PDF

Chapter 2 Context of Networked Public Communication Studies on networked public communication should pay attention to speciic historical and social context. The chapter irst explains the transition of human society from mass society to network society, and the new media landscape fol- lowing the transition. Then it concludes the rapid development of ICT in the 21st century in China as well as the motive of the Chinese government to promote ICT. The chapter inally elaborates the formation and features of networked public, the subject of networked public communication in contemporary China, as well as the signiicance of networked public communication to “non-networked public.” 2.1 Social Shift and Mediascape 2.1.1 Mass Society A town, such as London, where a man may wander for hours together without reaching the beginning of the end, without meeting the slightest hint which could lead to the infer- ence that there is open country within reach, is a strange thing. This colossal centralisa- tion, this heaping together of two and a half millions of human beings at one point, has multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundredfold; …these Londoners have been forced to sacriice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring to pass all the marvels of civilisation which crowd their city; … The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other, are they not all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy? And have they not, in the end, to seek happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with