Factores de influencia de la agenda setting

Some scholars, for instance Clay Shirky, Charles Leadbeater, and Michael Thomas maintain the Internet has become a vehicle of sharing and collaborative knowledge, consumption, networks and other values, and is especially effective in drawing young people into urban tribe activities. In this way new media technologies have become key tools for expressing lifestyles and for processes of community building and identify formation in China (Wallis, 2011). Furthermore the Internet serves as a       

1 QQ is a Chinese social media platform

core part of a web of values, relationships, symbols and routines that make up social life for Chinese youth (Liu, 2011).

The Chinese One Child Generation is also known as the ‘Lonely Me Generation’ whose limited experience of playing games with siblings has hindered the formation of their ability to build networks and their sense of self-fulfilment. The One Child Generation has experienced a different childhood than previous generations, in which their relative mobility makes their relationships to traditional network ties such as neighbours or relatives less intimate than the previous generation. For instance, Chen (2003) notes that only-children have an especially strong desire to socialise due to a lack of company at home. Single-children are very well adjusted amongst members of their peers, and possess developed social skills (Chen, 2003), so this unique capacity of the One Child Generation has become the motivation to build communities online and is conducive to creating trust in their new networks.

In the context of community, Liu (2011) argues that the Internet provides social places for urban youth, as it serves as part of a web of values, relationships, symbols and routines that constitute social life. Cyberspace may fill an existing vacuum in the physical world of Chinese cities by offering urban places of a new quality. Liu (2011) has demonstrated that the Internet has reoriented contemporary urban youth’s life world and identities. Furthermore, Liu (2011) finds the One Child Generation’s cyber culture is characterised by a strong interest in entertainment, consumerism, lifestyles, and self-expression, as ‘Chinese urban youth appear to be both radicals eager for individual self-expressions and dismal pragmatists bent on the goal of the ‘middle-class dream’ based on material achievement (Liu, 2011, p.76).

The One Child generation has largely grown up in Internet chat room which shows

that young people associate their entertainment-oriented relationship with the Internet because they can escape from the reality of being, ‘as the only-child lacking alternative leisure space, lacking development opportunities and lacking space for individual expression’ (Liu, 2011, p.183). Nevertheless, the Internet also shapes the young generation’s global imagination.

However, what Liu does not point out are the urban youth’s relationship with social issues and civic engagements other than the imperative of nationalism of the Chinese digital generation, as well as their relationship with new technology.

Chinese urban youth Internet activists are missing from Liu’s arguments. Yang Guobin (2009) in his book The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online has investigated online social movement in China. He indicates how some

surveys have found that online activists are mostly young and urban. Their private concerns are voiced in the public domain of the Internet, where reading, reposting, and talking about these stories become new socialising practices. In this way the Internet has become an important tool for non-confrontational social protest and group identity expression regarding environmental problems, corruption, exploitation of factory workers, various abuses of power, and social inequalities. 

Many members of the One Child Generation have gained some sophistication in digital engagement and their choices of consumption as a result of increased pluralism in Chinese social transformation (Hansen and Svarverud, 2010). Kleinman et al. (2011) states: ‘a new globalized generation who had experiences with civic society and self-development that were unknown in socialist China…is enriching and remaking civic life’ (Kleinman et al., 2011, p.18). Here, the value of new lifestyles and new life aspirations under the influence of globalisation reaches these individuals

through digital communication technologies and the market promotion of consumerism. 

Starting online, they have the ability to attract people who never could have met otherwise and develop influence across offline borders. These groups are based on interest or affiliation. While seemingly innocuous, these groups that are organised around common interests represent a new phenomenon for China (Bergstrom, 2013, p. 126).

New groups often form online and take their interests offline to socialise, support cases they care about, and exercise their increasing power as a consumer. They use their collective influence to shape causes they care about. Consumer groups are able to connect to each other collectively online and offline to make negotiations and form consumer activism. And, consumer-based groups in China are more than just lifestyle affiliations; they are also forms of social capital. Young people form social capital through affiliation with like-minded people (Yu, 2014, p.120).

Likewise, Bergstrom (2012) argues activism is initiated from the pursuit of consumer rights. The citizen consumer is emerging while digital media have played active roles in communicating and resolving issues. The explosion of the information age and extended social networks via the Internet provide empowerment for young generations to advocate for positive social change. These groups gather based on similar interests or affiliations and may also be hobby enthusiasts. For the post-90s and likely for generations to come, the person and the political are one interconnected sphere.

‘Within their chosen communities, post-90s in particular are using activism to build social capital. These cluster communities encourage member to expand their influence and sway others to their way of thinking. Hewitt argues, in terms of many domestic issues, the post-90s seem to have a greater sense of their own self-worth, their own rights, their own individuality, and their own need for space’ (Bergstrom, 2012).