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This article presents an analysis of a netnographic study of QQ groups engaged in contentious activities in China. Informed primarily by semi-structured in-depth interviews of 34 participants and field observations through years of grounded research, the findings shed light on the communicative dynamics and mobilization strategies of QQ groups in nurturing contentious action and motivating mass participation in social protest. In-group communication stays highly focused on the respective mission of the groups, and it cultivates a sense of shared awareness conducive to collective action. There is also a noticeable contagion effect that transfers the spirit of contestation in terms of speech and action. Mobilizing dynamics in the QQ groups point to a hybrid model of activist-brokered networks, which crosscuts and interconnects elements in Bennett and Segerberg's (2012) prototype of self-organizing networks and organizationally brokered networks. Group leaders and activists resort to a multi-layered mechanism to dissipate contentious information and to mobilize participation in protests.

The pervasive penetration of the smartphone has disproportionately affected adolescents and youth more than any other sociodemographic group. Inspired by the conceptual framework of the digital divide in internet use, this research aims to interrogate the multi-dimensional aspects of disparities in smartphone use among teens in China. Measurement was developed to assess the first-, second-, and third-level divide as manifested in smartphone access and engagement in a variety of activities, different skill sets, and myriad outcomes and consequences. Results from a cross-sectional survey of 1,511 at-school teens show various patterns of divide along the lines of age, gender, and rural/mid-sized-city/metropolitan location.

This article scrutinizes the widespread practice of gold farming in China through two-plus years of field research conducted in 13 gold farming studios across five cities involving 64 participants. Informed by current research and theoretical deliberations on digital labor and co-creative production, the analysis offers insight on the rationales, motivations, and perceptions of gold farming through the practitioners' perspectives of studio owners, managers, and players. It also explores the role of gold farm studios in the business cycle. Our discussion contextualizes gold farming as a special type of fan labor through transformative gameplay enmeshed in the global game capitalist market and contributes to the understanding of China's youth-led game culture in general and the variegated intricacies of the trade of gold farming in particular.

This article investigates media dependency among Chinese individuals during the SARS epidemic of 2003. While most media dependency research has examined dependency relations under circumstances when information was readily available, this study looks at a situation in which information was highly controlled and thus was not easily available from the mainstream media. As the socio-structural environment was not conducive to the free flow of information during a major public health crisis, audience members were not only actively engaged in information seeking from alternative resources such as short message services (SMS) and the internet, but they were also involved in creating alternative information channels by being information producers and disseminators. The internet was a particularly empowering tool to allow individuals to bypass official control and to challenge official claims during the crisis.

The field of local news is often associated with news deserts, commonly defined as geo-based communities without newspapers or other legacy media as providers of locally oriented news and civic information. This phenomenon is expanding in global society due to the diminishing presence of newspapers at moments of accelerated digitization. This study examines the multiplex nature of news deserts in rural and suburban areas in China. Data were collected through a multi-methods approach combining two focus groups and 44 semi-structured in-depth interviews. Patterns of engagement among interviewees reveal that smartphone-based social media applications and digital platforms function as viable sources of news, and incidental exposure to news has become the norm of digital news use. Government-orchestrated convergent media services and WeChat channels are preferred choices by most research participants for local news. We argue that a media ecology perspective may be a productive approach to understanding community news and local newspapers.

This book explores the phenomenon of online social networking in the contexts of a global multicultural society caught in the turmoil of the information and communication revolution. It offers readers an up-to-date overview of the field and pushes the area into new understandings of the topic within a multidimensional space.