Comparing Communication Systems

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Emphasizing the perspective of ordinary users, this book compares the uses of the internet in three centers of the global economy and world politics: China, Europe, and the United States. It examines the internet as the current centerpiece of communication systems encompassing interpersonal communication, mass communication, and social networking. The internet is unique as a medium in that it hosts both "old" media and "new" media. As such, it also integrates the prototypes of one-to-one (interpersonal) and one-to-many (broadcast) along with many-to-many (social media) and many-to-one (surveillance) communication. This book considers how all these media and communicative practices are embedded in social structures, cultural traditions, and historical legacies of place. Comparing conditions in China, Europe, and the United States, the chapters provide an overview of the distinctive regulatory regimes framing the internet and its local uses, the place of the internet in everyday life in each setting, and how the internet serves as a resource for political, economic, and cultural actions and interactions. Linking comparative analysis of media and social systems with ethnographic studi

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