Review and Outlook:the Research on Internet Communication in 2009

2009 is a fruitful year for the research on internet communication in China.This article will review and comment on papers from 20 different CSSCI journals which specialize in the field of internet communication. 1.Basic theory of internet communication Some researchers believe that the new media is a chaotic system.The spread of information based on new media is kind of circulation from order to disorder,then back to a new order.The results are unpredictable.Some researchers turn their attention to new media and empowerment theory.Others apply sociological theory to the applications and impacts of the emerging internet communities which consist of SNS,instant messaging,blog,etc.Some researchers take 2011 families from 10 major Chinese cities for examples and analyze the city dwellers' preference in internet using.Some researchers think Neil Possman,the representative figure of media ecology theories tend to focus on whether the new media and technological developments are harmful to the culture.Possman's theories can significantly aid our understanding of the essence and drawbacks of network media.2.The research of public opinions and network events Some researchers are convinced that public opinions expressed on the internet reflect the deep structural revolution compared to public opinions expressed in traditional means.Some researchers predict about the topics of public opinions supervision in the future.Some point out that highly-developed public opinions system can help introduce the bottom-up public opinions supervision into the highly centralized political patterns,which is a kind of complementary to public management mechanisms.Some researchers conclud the spreading features of the hottest internet events in 2009.According to some researchers,the lack of space for public opinions and post-modern cultural representation labeled with 'post-modernity' are the main causes of the new popular sayings on the internet.

2009 is a fruitful year for the research on internet communication in China. This article will review and comment on papers from 20 different CSSCI journals which specialize in the field of internet communication.