Mobilized by Mobile Media. How Chinese People use mobile phones to change politics and democracy
Résumé
This dissertation examines the use of the mobile phone in contentious politics in contemporary China. It undertakes a qualitative analysis of multiple cases to investigate how Chinese people adopt and appropriate mobile media to meet their communication needs, struggle against the authorities, and facilitate an inexpensive counter-public sphere. Drawing on Negt and Kluge's conceptual framework of the counter-public sphere, specifically, this study addresses the role of the mobile phone in guaranteeing the right to communication, which not only articulates the lived experiences of social and political exclusion but also ensures a relatively independent communicative sphere for counter-publics beyond the dominant public sphere in contemporary China.