Doctoral Dissertation Research: Constructing Online Counterpublic Spheres, Legality and Citizenship in China

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This research project investigates the role of authoritarian law in, counter-intuitively, developing and consolidating an online public sphere in ways that facilitate the expansion of narratives that challenge existing power structures. The research plan includes textual analysis and comparison of material produced online between January 2008 and April 2010 by an existing selected website and the reports of the major Chinese news agencies as they reported on public scandals. Data analysis of this material includes social network analysis on the reported information. The theoretical insights obtained in this study extend our understanding of public spheres and legal understanding in authoritarian contexts in the Information Age.