ABSTRACT
Scholars in international or global communication emphasize the impact of media on social process or transformation. As far as developing countries are concerned, they often try to link media with national development regardless of their ideological orientation. That is, media, in particular the electronic ones, are regarded as agents having a powerful impact on social change. Nevertheless, such direct linkage may not always be clear or even exist. Evidence suggests that the impact of media on national development is much more complicated than previously proposed or theorized by either modernization theorists or dependency scholars in communication of the West, in most cases referring to the United States of America. This chapter tries to take a local approach and explore the mobile phone’s social implications in urban China.
