Links with the past: mainland China's online literary communities and their antecedents

Internetica: Poetry in the digital age

“…The internet offers poets an intermediate situation between writing for themselves and publishing a book (Neiger and Abdullayev 2011). Hence, the online literary creator has a better entry point into the traditional literary world, since one may gain recognition from followers in the online community regardless of traditional publication, such as the literary magazines (Hockx, 2005). The internet encourages the poets to communicate with their readers via social networks, email, and chats, which makes contemporary poetry interactive and shared (Parish, 2008).…”

“…The third strand of existing research deals with online literary communities and their significance for internet poets (Bar-Ilan and Groisman, 2003; Hamidi and Baljko, 2012; Hockx, 2005). Online literary communities are networks of artists that get together and publish their poems on platforms, including social networks, mailing lists, and forums wherein readers can read, respond, and discuss writing experiences and meanings.…”

“…It seems that the dominance of the web community is unrelated to the poetic text itself and is tied to the new methods of production and distribution. Hockx (2005) mentions the contempt that some feel towards online literary communities’ poetry, which, he believes, arises from misguided assumptions that it is an unfiltered version of printed poetry. However, he believes that online community literature is an independent genre with its own textual and extra-textual characteristics.…”

Technology and Its Contents: Issues in the Study of the Chinese Internet

“…The Chinese internet is a vibrant cultural realm. People are engaged in numerous playful activities such as digital animations and flash movies (Voci 2010), internet literature (Hockx 2004;Yang 2010), online spoofing and carnival (Meng 2011; Herold and Marolt 2011), online creative linguistic practices (Yuan 2011), as well as gaming (Lindtner and Szablewicz 2011). Despite an enormous digital divide, many social groups are actively using the internet, including transnational cyber-sects (Thornton 2008), same-sex communities (Ho 2007), Chinese diaspora (Ding 2007), migrant workers (Qiu 2009), American expatriates in China (Qi and Chao 2010), environmentalists (Sullivan and Xie 2009), journalists (Yu 2011), rights-defense activists (Yang 2011), and even lawyers and judges (Cheung 2011).…”

Multimedia Quake Poetry: Convergence Culture after the Sichuan Earthquake

“…Cultural precedent, as Michel Hockx and Yang Guobin have argued, is in fact an essential element in the development of internet culture. 65 Many online cultural forms, such as online literary magazines, have their roots in pre-existing artistic genres and media of circulation. If multimedia poetry, like the examples of Quake Poetry adaptations investigated in this article, is to be viewed as an emergent part of China's ever-developing internet culture, then it cannot be understood independently of China's poetic tradition.…”