| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 社會學研究所 === 99 === Taking Taiwan’s largest internet news forum “PTT Gossiping” as research object, this thesis analyses the culture of internet crowds formed through the medium of BBS (Bulletin Board System), and explores its democratic implications. Different from existing researches of “internet public sphere”, this thesis set out its arguments by resorting to concepts of “counterpublics” and “carnival”, and concludes with the notions of “heteroglossia” and “public square”, both proposed by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, to demonstrate how a collectively carnivalistic social space of interaction, formed by internet, can provide us with an alternative imagination of public life that is different from Habermasian (elite) public sphere.
This thesis consists of two parts: firstly, it analyses the culture of internet crowds from the sociological perspective of collectivity, taking PTT Gossiping as example (Ch. 2 & Ch. 3); secondly, it elaborates the democratic implications of this culture (Ch. 4). In Ch. 2, we review the historical development of PTT Gossiping, in order to demonstrate that the “internet public” constituting this news forum shows a non-personal as well as non-rational mode of social interaction, which we can provisionally describe as “internet mobbing”. In Ch. 3, we elaborate the sociological meaning of internet mobbing, by resorting to concepts such as “collective effervescence” and “carnival”, arguing that the “extraordinary, exceptional” feature of strong collective emotions can still be observed nowadays in internet interactions. This collectivity is neither similar to rational, reasoning mode of interaction proposed by the idea of “public sphere”, nor can it be denounced simply as “irrational” or bad culture. Based on this kind of social interaction, in Ch. 4 we explore how the using of carnivalistic language by internet crowds can embody Bakhtinian heteroglossia. By emphasizing the value of multiple perspectives, the carnivalistic language use of internet crowds breaks away from Habermasian public sphere, and helps to bring about a public life depicted by Bakhtinian “public square”, encouraging dialogue rather than forcing consensus. Finally, in Ch. 5 we sum up the thesis, and discuss ideas such as “social relationship / mob-ility”, “game”, and “everyday life”, which can serve as possible directions for further studies on internet culture.
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