The Web of Meaning: The Internet in a Changing Chinese Society

"As internet studies in China become more deeply embedded into China’s social and economic domains, it becomes harder for scholars to find new approaches that can tackle and analyse the internet as a whole. Yuan’s book makes a great contribution by presenting China’s internet as discursive fields that are embedded in the very fibre of Chinese society."

Ping Sun, China Quarterly

"Developing a new theoretical approach for understanding the impact of Internet technologies and communication in China, The Web of Meaning offers an innovative and insightful analysis of concrete but important aspects of the Chinese Internet landscape. Elaine J. Yuan shows convincingly how a field perspective enables a more pluralistic and relational understanding of Chinese digital spaces."

Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

"Not only is The Web of Meaning of theoretical originality, but it is also a timely intervention in the current academic debate around the social, cultural, and political implications of networked communication, in China and beyond. Elaine J. Yuan’s framework critiques the dominant Habermasian model of the public sphere by emphasizing the contested nature of online discourses and the mutual constitution of the social and the symbolic. The empirical foci of the investigation are equally well defined, namely network privacy, cyber-nationalism, and the network market."

Bingchun Meng, Associate Professor of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science