Functional Analysis On The Rapid Development Of Internet In China

The Internet is a product of the development of communication technology after humanbeing gets into the information society, and it was born in the United States in the1960s. TheChinese people began to get access to the Internet in1987and connected to the Internet in1994, since then the Internet began a rapid development in China. At the end of December2011, the number of Internet users in China has exceeded500million, which ranking first inthe world; China’s Internet penetration rate has reached38.3percent,8.1percentage pointshigher than the corresponding global Internet penetration rate (30.2%). The development ofthe Internet in China has distinctive features, which mainly include: the surpassivedevelopment process led by the Chinese government; the abnormal level of developmentdetermined by the demographic structure of China and the uneven development caused by thesocial structure of China.Through a critique of the traditional functional theory, Robert K Merton proposed hisown paradigm of functional analysis to guide empirical research. In his paradigm offunctional analysis, Merton has surpassed those previous functional scholars who focusedonly on the positive functions of the social system, and put forward the concept of "negative(anti-) function", which could help us to make a comprehensive, objective understanding on avariety of subjects. From the functional analysis point of view, the Internet has both positiveand negative functions. Its positive functions are greater than the negative functions can bethe root cause of the rapid development of the Internet. As a utensil, the Internet itself isneutral, and its function depends on how the Internet users take advantage of it. Through theactive and rational use of the Internet, it can meet individuals’ needs of information,communication, entertainment, business transactions and freely express, but improper use ofit can easily lead to the issue of network security, cyber crime and Internet addiction disorderand so on.In Merton’s paradigm of functional analysis, for the first time he divided the functioninto significant functions and latent (hidden) functions, and proposed that sociologists cannotbe confined to the expected consequences, which are significant functions, of the socialphenomena, yet also should study those unintended consequences, namely the potentialfunctions. To some extent, the analysis of the latent functions can deepen people’s understanding and awareness of social phenomena. The rapid development of China’sInternet has far-reaching economic, political and cultural consequences, but there are alsosome unintended consequences that cannot be ignored, such as the phenomenon of"information pollution", the exacerbating of the "digital divide", the expand of the "culturalfeedback" effect, the changes of the social power structure and the boost of the group eventsand so on.The network society is a projection and extension of the reality in cyberspace, and thecoordinated development of social reality is the basis and premise of the benign operation ofthe network society, the answers to the problems in network society can be found from thesocial reality. To ensure the benign operation of the network society, for the time being, weshould strengthen the guidance and supervision of the Internet users who are the main bodyof the network society.