Recent articles by Guobin Yang
Undark, 2022
A delivery driver's social media posts highlight the daily struggles of those confined during the... more A delivery driver's social media posts highlight the daily struggles of those confined during the pandemic. An excerpt from The Wuhan Lockdown (Columbia University Press, 2022). URL of the book excerpt: https://undark.org/2022/03/04/book-excerpt-the-wuhan-lockdown/
AI & Society, 2021
When the city of Wuhan was severely locked down on January 23, 2020 for 76 days due to the corona... more When the city of Wuhan was severely locked down on January 23, 2020 for 76 days due to the coronavirus outbreak, many residents started writing "lockdown diaries." This article argues these diaries constitute a kind of performance art for their authors, specifically, an 'art of endurance' as described by Shalson (2018). Keeping a diary requires a plan, but the following through of the plan is a contingent process requiring efforts and endurance. The challenges become particularly daunting for authors of online diaries in pandemic times. The article analyzes multiple types of endurance associated with the Wuhan lockdown diarists, showing that in digitally-driven environments, where potential collective responses are a key context, the lockdown diaries of Wuhan, like works of endurance art, engage with meanings that reach far beyond their original experience and context. Their stories of endurance are an allegory of the endurance of the entire city of Wuhan.
International Journal of Communication, 2017
With the declining number of Internet protest events in recent years, online activism in China ha... more With the declining number of Internet protest events in recent years, online activism in China has suffered a setback. This is due significantly to the implementation of new forms of governing online expression. At the center of these new forms is a set of discourses of wenming, the Chinese characters for which can be translated as both "civilization" and "civility." As civilization, wenming operates as an ideological discourse of legitimation, whereas as civility, wenming functions as a strategic technology for Internet governance. After tracing the evolution of the ideological discourse of wenming, this article analyzes the technologies of civility used for managing online speech in China. Two case studies illustrate how the technologies of civility are used to demobilize the emotions of online protest.
Voices: Exploring the Shifting Contours of Communication, 2019
The 50th anniversary of the global protest movements of 1968 offers the most apt opportunity to r... more The 50th anniversary of the global protest movements of 1968 offers the most apt opportunity to reflect upon and theorize about voice and communication. This essay briefly discusses the achievements of voice in the 1960s protest movements and then draws two related lessons from the 1960s - one concerning violence and the other concerning theoreticism or scholasticism. I highlight the value of listening through a discussion of David Scott's (2017) study of Stuart Hall's ethics of listening and argue that the celebration of voice in communication research must be built on a celebration of the ethics of listening.
Chapter in Digital Keywords edited by Benjamin Peters and published by Princeton University Press... more Chapter in Digital Keywords edited by Benjamin Peters and published by Princeton University Press in 2016.
From Cyber-Nationalism to Fandom Nationalism, 2019
Disappeared websites are the missing pages of web history. We examine over 140 memory narratives ... more Disappeared websites are the missing pages of web history. We examine over 140 memory narratives of disappeared websites in China, in which 176 disappeared websites are remembered. We find that memories of disappeared websites rarely treat websites as dead objects, machines, or even as media, but more often as people whose death is mourned and memories cherished. They not only narrate the biographies of the websites but also the autobiographies of the storytellers. The main biographical plot in these narratives of disappeared websites is a lovely life that was tragically cut short. Disappeared websites are most remembered for the passion, community, and sense of youthful idealism which they had inspired. Remembrances of disappeared websites are both retrospective and prospective. They resuscitate a lost golden age while expressing voices of protest at Internet censorship. They both highlight and repair a web history marked by disruption and disappearance. Ever since their first appearance, websites everywhere have come and gone. Those which disappear, do so for many different reasons such as financial, political, and managerial.
Through an analysis of chapters in the recently published volume China’s Contested Internet, this... more Through an analysis of chapters in the recently published volume China’s Contested Internet, this article discusses issues of theory and methods in the study of the internet and digital media in China. It proposes a “deep internet studies” approach that foregrounds people’s lived experiences, historicity, as well as a balanced and reflexive approach to theory and description. Recent works on “thin description” in anthropology and “surface reading” and “the descriptive turn” in literary theory are reviewed to shed light on the reflexivity of a “deep internet studies” approach.
Since 2013, contention-oriented Internet events have been increasingly transformed into consensus... more Since 2013, contention-oriented Internet events have been increasingly transformed into consensus-oriented new media events in the Chinese cyberspace. The direct cause of this transformation is the obstruction of online
emotional mobilization. The main emotions expressed in online mobilization, such as sympathy, anger, and playfulness, have been increasingly labeled and
attacked as negative, irrational, and uncivil. The key condition surrounding the demobilization of online emotions is a set of new policies that are centered on
the concepts of civility and civilization as well as the new social environment in which these policies are implemented. The practice of regulating the Internet
in the name of civility constitutes a civilizing process. This process has undermined emotional mobilization online, leading to the weakening of contentious online activism in China in the past few years.
As a new type of cyber-nationalistic action, “D8 expedition” was a self-performance. Its targeted... more As a new type of cyber-nationalistic action, “D8 expedition” was a self-performance. Its targeted audience was not so much the publics and media across the Taiwan Strait as the participants themselves and mainland media and Internet users. In a disenchanted era of commercialization and individualization, "D8 expedition” gave young netizens an opportunity to imagine collective heroism. At the same time, as a new media event, "D8 expedition” was in a delicate relationship with state politics and betrayed the uneasy overtones of an imperial mentality.
Hashtag activism happens when large numbers of postings appear on social media under a common has... more Hashtag activism happens when large numbers of postings appear on social media under a common hashtagged word, phrase or sentence with a social or political claim. The temporal unfolding of these mutually connected postings in networked spaces gives them a narrative form and agency. Applying Karlyn Campbell’s propositions about rhetorical agency to the case of #BlackLivesMatter, this essay shows that narrative agency in hashtag activism derives from its narrative form as well as from its contents and social context. Narrative agency is communal, invented, skillful, and protean.
A review essay on three books: 1) Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization, by Je... more A review essay on three books: 1) Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization, by Jessica L. Beyer; 2) Do-It-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry, by Caroline W. Lee; and 3) The Coming Swarm: DDOS Actions, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet, by Molly Sauter
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Recent articles by Guobin Yang
emotional mobilization. The main emotions expressed in online mobilization, such as sympathy, anger, and playfulness, have been increasingly labeled and
attacked as negative, irrational, and uncivil. The key condition surrounding the demobilization of online emotions is a set of new policies that are centered on
the concepts of civility and civilization as well as the new social environment in which these policies are implemented. The practice of regulating the Internet
in the name of civility constitutes a civilizing process. This process has undermined emotional mobilization online, leading to the weakening of contentious online activism in China in the past few years.
emotional mobilization. The main emotions expressed in online mobilization, such as sympathy, anger, and playfulness, have been increasingly labeled and
attacked as negative, irrational, and uncivil. The key condition surrounding the demobilization of online emotions is a set of new policies that are centered on
the concepts of civility and civilization as well as the new social environment in which these policies are implemented. The practice of regulating the Internet
in the name of civility constitutes a civilizing process. This process has undermined emotional mobilization online, leading to the weakening of contentious online activism in China in the past few years.
Victor Pickard and Guobin Yang have assembled essays by leading scholars and activists to provide case studies of feminist, technological, and political interventions during different historical periods and at local, national, and global levels. Looking at the underlying theories, histories, politics, ideologies, tactics, strategies, and aesthetics, the book takes an expansive view of media activism. It explores how varieties of activism are mediated through communication technologies, how activists deploy strategies for changing the structures of media systems, and how governments and corporations seek to police media activism. From memes to zines, hacktivism to artivism, this volume considers activist practices involving both older kinds of media and newer digital, social, and network-based forms.
Media Activism in the Digital Age provides a useful cross-section of this growing field for both students and researchers.
型」的反向運動的一部分。本文運用社會運動理論中的文化分析方法研究網絡事件，發現網絡事件的動員，所依賴的是能夠激發網民的嬉笑怒駡、喜怒哀樂等情感的表現形式和內容。網絡事件的發生，是一個情感動員的過程。文章通過對兩個案例的分析，揭示了網絡事件中情感動員的兩種風格。《一個饅頭引發的血案》代表的是戲謔的情感動員風格，常見於網絡文化事件。山西黑磚窯事件，代表了悲情的情感動員風格，見於涉及各類社會不公的網絡社會事件。