Media Is Place:A Study On The Sense Of Place In City Micro-Blog Super-Topic Communities

With the acceleration of modernization and the rapid development of media technology,the spatial isolation seems to no longer exist due to the distance-free and spatiotemporal characteristics of network communication.The concept of place is increasingly challenged in cyberspace,which leads to the dilemma of "no place".In this dilemma,the sense of place of the network subject seems to be dissolved into "no sense of place".Therefore,re-understanding of place and sense of place has become an important proposition in the Internet era.In this context,based on the concept of "media is place",this study connects media and place,chooses the city micro-blog super-topic community with the dual attributes of virtual and real place as the research object,takes the core concept of human geography "sense of place" as the entry point,and discusses the place and sense of place in cyberspace under the framework of three levels of cognition,behavior and emotion.This paper takes Chongqing micro-blog super-topic community as a case,comprehensively uses the research methods of participatory observation and in-depth interview to outline the local outline of city micro-blog super-topic community from an overall perspective,and selects 25 media users related to it for interviews,to investigate the local practice and emotional attachment of network subjects in city micro-blog super-topic community.It is found that in the context of treating media as place,the city micro-blog super-topic community opens up a new scene of the interaction between people and places in cyberspace and interprets the new connotation of the sense of place.On the cognitive level,the city micro-blog super-topic community is represented as the place of symbol and place of existence.At the behavioral level,the network subject based on geographic aggregation carries out various local practices and constructs the local dependence on city micro-blog super-topic community.On the emotional level,the city micro-blog super-topic community carries the emotional attachment of the geographical group,and promotes them to form a diversified local identity.In short,from the perspective of the influence of media technology on place and sense of place,media place presents the characteristics of reality and virtual integration,public and private intermingling,and authentic and unreal mixing.Media sense of place highlights the two aspects of place dependence supported by media technology and diversified place identity of emotional attachment.