Research On Regulation Of The Vulgar Internet Content In China

In the past few years, we have witnessed that more appeals have been given by many researchers for governing and regulating web content. In China, with the rise and boom of the Internet, corresponding regulatory organizations and institutions are gradually established, while relevant policies, laws and other instruments are successively issued and enacted, too. But the regulatory effect is not very satisfactory. The flooding of pornographic content in cyberspace remains a serious problem. With the rapid development of the scale and influence of the Internet in China, and the Internet users group becoming younger, the whole society is now faced with a severe challenge. The necessity and urgency of supervision and control over pornographic content of the Internet become particularly prominent and important.Regulation and control against vulgar content of the Internet is not a fresh topic. This paper chose to study in this area because currently the Internet users are still frequently influenced by such kind of content and information and the pornography issue of the Internet content has not been effectively resolved yet. Seen from existing literatures, many studies first pitched in the topic from such single perspective as sociology, law, information science, or ethics, and then conducted analyses and optimization on the deficiencies found in the "regulatory measures" of this field; rarely any literature took into all-around consideration of the regulation and control against vulgar content to find the crux of the problem and the short plank of the bucket, which is often the focal problem that constrains the effect of regulation.Therefore, this paper started by probing into the crux of the ineffectiveness of the regulation and control in China against vulgar websites, and found out the short planks constraining the effect of regulation are low risk cost for Internet users in visiting vulgar websites and low probability of discovering such websites. Based on these findings, the paper brought up two scientific issues-the risk perception and accessing behavior of vulgar websites users; and from these two perspectives the paper conducted in-depth study on the characteristics and current status of the objective system of "vulgar websites and their users" in China to discuss the relationship between and the evolvement patterns of the variables which reflects the characteristics of the objective system. Based on the conclusions of such study, the paper provided suggestions to counter the short planks in the regulations against vulgar websites and users.From the perspective of game theory, the paper first conducted probing and discussions on the three factors:i) the origin of vulgar content-vulgar websites, ii) the destination of vulgar content-Internet users, and iii) the relevant actions of government-led regulators, and built a game model there among, considering in an all-around manner the short planks in the regulation and control against vulgar contents, in an attempt to find the crux for the ineffectiveness in China’s regulation against vulgar websites and users. The paper introduced the perceived risk theory into the governance against vulgar websites, sorted out the composition and intensity of perceived risks for domestic Internet users in accessing vulgar websites and the structural model of the impact of such risks on their behavior. The paper utilized panel-based measurement methods to obtain the samples’behavioral data in accessing various websites including vulgar websites, probed into the consumers’ websites jumping behavior in the specific task environment of "browsing vulgar contents", conducted in-depth analyses on the internet users’ behavioral characteristics in accessing vulgar websites and the accessory paths to such websites, and built a discriminant model based on the characteristics how the vulgar websites are accessed. The paper also probed into the search terms involved in enquiries of "vulgar contents" and analyzed the characteristics and patterns of the search terms, more fully and accurately comprehended the search engine promoting strategies of vulgar websites. On the basis of the above perceived risks and behavioral patterns of internet users in accessing vulgar websites, the paper suggested countermeasures for the regulation and control against vulgar contents.