Columbia Univers. Press Yang, G: Power of the Internet in China

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Guobin Yang's pioneering study maps contentious forms and practices linked to Chinese cyberspace, delineating a dynamic image of the Chinese Internet as an arena for creativity, community, conflict, and control. Like many contemporary protest forms, Yang argues, Chinese online activism derives its methods and vitality from multiple and intersecting forces, and state efforts to constrain it have only led to more creative acts of subversion. Yang's vivid story exemplifies this new era of informational politics, and a new afterword provides a detailed analysis of recent developments.