Structural Change and Evolution of China’s Internet Society

This title investigates China’s network society, both its online cyber society and offline real world society, by analyzing the trends and social foundations of society as network and the social challenges it poses, as well as structural changes in social space and social interaction.

The first part of the book examines how network society in China forms and develops, analyzing the challenges and structural changes it poses. The author studies network power and uncertainties that lies in the supply, flow, and reception of a massive amount of information, revealing how this influences the government’s administrative power as well as governance measures to stabilize social cohesion. The second part first discusses the social restructuring and characteristics of network social space in China. Based on case studies of several momentous social events, the spatial change characterized by an integration of absence and presence space and its influence on social interaction and experience is elucidated, including active absence interaction, mediated experience, spatial representation, and social identities of network aggregation.

The book will be a crucial reference for scholars and students studying sociology, network sociology, and contemporary Chinese society.

Liu Shaojie is a professor at the Research Center for Sociological Theory and Methods of Renmin University of China and a chair professor at Anhui University, China. His main research fields include network sociology, theoretical sociology, and economic sociology.