「鄉民」的誕生：線上論壇中認同語意及娛樂功能之歷史考察

The Making of "Xiang-Min" in Online Forum: Historical Emergence of Semantics about Identity and Function of Entertainment from a Luhmannian Perspective

黃上銓(Shang-Cheng Huang)

指導教授 ： 林鶴玲

國立臺灣大學/社會科學院/社會學研究所/碩士(2013年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2013.01386

摘要

本文旨在考察「批踢踢實業坊」的使用者文化，並指出「鄉民」的認同浮現，與論壇的娛樂功能興起，兩者之間的親近關係。對於線上論壇的研究早在1990年就被論者以「虛擬社群」的概念概括，這樣的描述雖然可以適用於部分網路空間，但在應用到鄉民文化上卻有一些侷限：(1)窄化「溝通」的意涵，因而較忽視意圖並不在於建立社群的網路溝通；(2)未能概念化「大型論壇」中較為大眾化或非關特定個人的網路起鬨及語言遊戲現象；(3)研究範圍多半為單一看板（或社群），而未能從更廣的角度針對鄉民文化這個跨看板的現象進行比較考察，也較少針對個別溝通模式形成的歷時性脈絡進行探究。

從Luhmann式系統理論的視角出發，本文試圖考察以BBS為首的線上論壇，在這20年來中溝通模式的演變：(1)「系統分化」的觀念提醒我們關注大型論壇在何種程度上建立起相對自主性，即自有的觀察視角、記憶及節奏；(2)「象徵一般化媒介」的觀念說明了溝通情境的分化常是溝通成功銜接下去的關鍵；(3)「語意�社會結構」這組概念則點出兩者的緊張，同時又暗示藉由前者觀察後者的可能，而這就讓線上社會自我問題化及反思的板務資料，適合用來考察溝通模式的變遷；(4)「演化」的觀點則要求我們對諸過程之間進行比較，以捕捉出諸種鄉民文化形式的共同起源及結構相似性。循此，針對論壇的網路溝通這個較為限定的現象，我則主要考察五個考察論壇內部溝通模式的主要面向：語意、論題、判準、文類、圖式，再輔以外部脈絡如技術架構、使用者等等來解釋。

台灣線上社會在1990年代開始發展。當時主要來自大學校園的使用者，對於BBS這項媒介科技抱持擴大言論空間的期望。面對這樣的趨勢，「虛擬社群」的運作邏輯則傾向限縮言論空間。在此階段，人際關係和品質是篩選溝通最為主要的兩種判準，而兩者都有助於限縮可能言論的空間。論壇依據主題而分隔空間的設計，正好適合愈來愈分眾化的現實社會在線上形塑社群，藉由看板的物理界線，個別社群能夠特殊化其感知的圖式，並使其推崇的「價值」免於遭受比較、質疑的危險，不同的價值遂成為「虛擬社群」中讓溝通成功銜接下去的主要媒介。

以此，在運作機制上，可以看出鄉民文化和虛擬社群的一些差異：(1)在論題特性上，主要溝通情境為社交或發展人際關係的看板，談話的主題多半環繞於對方這個「個人」，而較難形成集體記憶，而大型論壇則能在跨越單一主題的侷限下，對個別主題形塑記憶；(2)使用者的認同不再是環繞著個別社群的論題及人際網絡，而是指向成員共享的語言遊戲式文類，以及針對個別主題的評價立場，也正因如此，才需要額外發明「鄉民」這個指稱群體認同的語意；(3)社群較傾向壓抑衝突，然而價值衝突在晚近的大型論壇中基本上屢見不鮮，而虛構的文類則讓鄉民文化獲得更進一步擴大言論空間的能力；(4)儘管價值在鄉民文化中仍扮演要角，但「娛樂」成為使溝通成功銜接下去的主要媒介。

有些鄉民文化則保有和虛擬社群之間的連續性，在此，雖然作者這邊仍進行較為個人化的敘事，但讀者傾向以較非關個人、大眾化的方向解讀。隨著成員透過溝通建立起一套關於集體的「生活經驗」之圖式，自嘲與戲弄其他群體成員的行為開始變得普遍，這使語言遊戲或虛構的文類漸漸正當化，這正是線上論壇隨著人口增長後，娛樂化的第一條路徑。

線上論壇娛樂化的第二條路徑則首見於討論「通俗文本」的看板，其後也擴散到以生活經驗為論題的看板中。在此，論壇擴張的後果，體現在不同立場的迷群或其他群體之間勢不可免的衝突上，但是，針對討論對象或異質立場的網友之「揶揄」，則讓衝突和娛樂判準結合起來，這反映在「酸民」的語意上。稠密的溝通網絡，讓大型論壇發展出一種針對個別對象進行評價的後設視角，遂以反諷的姿態觀察及描述社會。將特定「身分」連結到一組刻板化「行為」的流行語，則是論壇建立出一套集體圖式的指標。

最後，本研究提出以下結論：(1)台灣的線上論壇，經歷了人際關係、品質及娛樂三種溝通情境的分化，而相較於限縮言論空間的虛擬社群，大型論壇則藉由帶有特定後設視角的語言遊戲式文類來拓寬言論空間；(2)根據通俗文化研究的傳統，應當留意娛樂仍具有承載特定價值的功能，而網路娛樂的形式，則讓對於論題的負面評價溝通，更具有正向的銜接能力；(3)可以將「鄉民」視為一種和「公民」有所區隔的施為者類型，相較於嚴肅討論公共事務並採取集體行動的公民，鄉民則較常採取幽默模式，並以充滿情緒的方式，對論題對象進行觀察及描述。

關鍵字

系統理論 ； 虛擬社群 ； 娛樂 ； 批踢踢 ； 鄉民 ； 網路溝通

並列摘要

The goal of this thesis is to study the user culture of ‘Ptt.cc’, and to suggest that the identity of ‘Xiang-Min’ emerged due to the entertainment function of forum. About online forum, previous studies have summarized it with ‘virtual community’ since 1990s. Although such description can be applied to some cyberspaces, there are following blind spots (especially when applied to Xiang-Min culture in large forum): (1) the notion of ‘communication’ is too narrow, and some types of communication which are not intended to build community are neglected; (2) they fail to conceptualize more massive or impersonal phenomenon in ‘large forum’, such as Internet mobbing and language-play; (3) the scope of their studies is often restricted to single board (or community), so they fail to make a comparative analysis about Xiang-Min culture, which is a trans-board phenomenon; furthermore, they seldom explore the diachronic contexts of communicative patterns in each board.

From a Luhmannian system-theory perspective, this thesis tries to examine the transformation of online forum (mainly BBS) in last 20 years. It includes: (1) the notion of ‘system differentiation’ reminds us to notice to what extent does online forum has developed relative autonomy with its own perspective, memory and tempo; (2) the notion of ‘symbolic generalized media’ implies the differentiation of communicative situation is often the key to connect communication successfully; (3) the distinction of ‘semantics/social structure’ implies the tension between them, while we still can infer social structure from semantics, and it means affairs about board can be seen as the self-problematization and self-reflection of online society, which can be treated as data to analyze changes of communicative pattern; (4) the viewpoint of ‘evolution’ require us to compare each process, in order to grasp the structural affinity among forms of Xiang-Min culture. In this way, as for online communication in forum, a more specific phenomenon, I mainly examine five dimensions of internal communicative pattern: semantics, theme, criteria, genre and scheme; besides, external context such as user or technical architecture may help us to explain too.

In Taiwan, online society begins to develop in 1990s. At that time, most of users came from college campus, and they expected BBS as a media technology to expand speech space. Facing such trends, the logic of ‘virtual community’ tends to limit speech space by two criteria: personal relationship and information quality. Accidentally, forum is designed in a way where the cyberspace is divided according to different topics, and this suits external society which is more and more segmented. Besides, through the physical boundary of board, each community can specialize its perceptual schemes, and avoid the danger that the ‘value’ admired by certain community would be compared or questioned bu outsiders. Hence, value is the primary communication media to make communications connected successfully.

Then, as for operational mechanism, we can see some differences between Xiang-Min culture and virtual community: (1) as for the thematic features, it’s more difficult to form collective memory in the boards whose primary communicative situation is highly personal (eg. sociability or intimacy), while large forum can form memory about each topic without restricting itself to a single topic; (2) the online identity is not based on theme and interpersonal network of each community, but on the language-play genre people share (this is why people need to invent semantics like ‘Xiang-Min’ to refer to their identity); (3) community prefers to inhibit conflict, however, value conflict is commonplace in large forum, besides, fictional genre contributes to the expansion of possible speech space; (4) although value still play an important role in Xiang-Min culture, ‘entertainment’ becomes the main media to increase communicational connectivity, i.e. probability of communication success.

We also can see continuity between Xiang-Min culture and virtual community in certain communities. In such spaces, authors still provided quite personal narrative, yet readers tended to decode in a more impersonal way, so communication became more massive. Because participants built some schemes about collective ‘experience of everyday life’, self-mockery and teasing other partners in inner group were generalized. Afterwards, the genres of language-play and fiction were legitimatized. This is the first entertaining route of online forum with the growth of population.

The second route was seen in the boards discussing ‘popular texts’ at first. And then this trend was diffused into the other route, i.e. the boards with theme relevant to everyday-life experience. In such places, we can see another consequence due to growth of forum: the inevitable conflict between different fans or other groups. Other than simple flaming, conflict and entertainment were linked through ridiculing, and the semantics of ‘Suain-Min’ reflected such change. Thanks to the high density of communicative network, large forum has developed a viewpoint from meta-level to evaluate single object, and this is why such forum often observes and describes society like an ironist. Buzzwords linking ‘social categories’ to stereotyped ‘acts’, can be seen as an indicator which shows that forum has built collective schemes.

Finally, this thesis has three main conclusions: (1) online forum in Taiwan has experienced the differentiation between three communicative situations, i.e. personal relationship, information quality and entertainment; also, contrasted to virtual community which often limits speech space, large forum expands possible speech space through language-play genre with certain viewpoint from meta-level; (2) according to the tradition of popular culture studies, we should notice that value can be carried by entertainment functionally; also, the forms of Internet entertainment, make the negative evaluative communication about certain themes becomes more positive, i.e. can be connected by more following communications; (3) we can seen ‘Xiang-Min’ as an type of agent, which should be distinguished by ‘citizen’; contrasted to citizens discussing public affairs seriously, Xiang-min usually observes and describes thematic objects in humorous mode and a more emotional way.

並列關鍵字

system theory ； virtual community ； entertainment ； PTT ； Xiang-Min ； online communication

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