Micropower Analysis Of Cyberculture

Cyberculture is a new cultural form based on the wide application of Internet. It is characterized with openness, freedom, richness in content, vague originality, hyperlinks that can carry people from one node to another, and so on. The essay focuses mainly on the power mechanism in cyberculture based on Michel Foucault's micropower theory, and further discusses how cyberculture and mainstream culture interacts in the present cultural discourse. It consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 introduces cyberculture and relevant researches, including the origination and development of cyberculture, and the existing researches. Chapter 2 compares power in the traditional sense with micropower, and discusses the power structure of cyberculture. By analyzing the new features of power in cyberculture, this chapter argues about necessity and applicability of micropower in cyberculture. Chapter 3 starts to elaborate Michel Foucault's micropower theory and associates it with cyberculture, especially on the notions of power/knowledge and discourse. Chapter 4 further develops the argument into an analysis of micropower operations in cyberculture, prying into the interactive mechanism of power and resistance. Resistance and power, as Foucault claims, are actually indispensable to each other, and they are in an eternal dynamic relationship. Finally, the conclusion of this essay is drawn in Chapter 5. Cyberculture, with all its appealing resisting features, will finally enter the mainstream. Its cooperation with mainstream power will create a more stable power structure in cyberculture.