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Previous studies on new media's impact on society had produced contradictory theories. Medium theory claimed that technology was a dominant force through which media influenced society and culture. Social Determinism theory argued that it is the users, not technologies themselves that determined the blossom and the impact of new media. Critical schools and Cultural studies added their own elements. However, different from all previous theories that stress on one factor to be the fundamental factor that affected the development of society, this study predicted and found evidence that new technology and users both played an important role in changing society. Applying both qualitative and quantitative methods--content analysis of Tibet & Olympic Torch videos on YouTube, a random sample of 585 Macau residents and six intensive interviews, this study explored how the development of YouTube affected people's media utilization habits, and consequently brought about change on people's perception about media. Whether the users actively made use of this new media and used it to change the society was another concern of the study. Findings showed that the new media understudy, YouTube, changed some people's media utilization habits and news interpretation, but not everyone's: to those who held strong opinions on issues, watching YouTube only strengthened their original opinions, while to those who held less strong opinions about certain issues, watching YouTube's videos may change their mind. YouTube did have a significant impact on the structure of society--grassroots users utilized this new tool to win discourse right and thus broke the monopoly of traditional media, which further broke the information monopoly of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay focuses on the comments regarding the symposium on medium theory, which is reported to be alive and well in China. This announcement was given by W. J. T. Mitchell and Wang Ning during the 2004 conference. However, according to the author, one question left unaddressed by them was how global debate, like any supranational discourse, must and will adapt to the demands of its participants.

The popularity of Internet communities has raised the question of how they relate to offline communities. Yet there has been hardly any research that focuses on this question. This article examines the relationship between online and off fine communities through a case study of the community formed on a bulletin board on the world-wide web and the women's group in Hong Kong, the Queer Sisters, who created the board. The study finds that the community formed on the bulletin board is largely autonomous in relation to the offline group. Informed by `medium theory', this article highlights the social potential of the Internet in forming communities. However the article also argues that contingent conditions have an important influence on whether online communities are autonomous in relation to the offline communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]