The Online Social Support of Chinese Fellow Townsman in Post Pandemic

As a kind of disease risk, the global spread of the COVID-19 may just be a microcosm of the global risk society. Affected by the epidemic, people adopt more online virtual connections and have become more dependent on social media. This paper conducted the online social support of Chinese fellow-townsman analysis via conducting online participatory observations on the QQ group of Xinhua immigrants and conducting in-depth interviews with 15 of them. This study found that the social support obtained by the Chinese Fellow Townsman through the Internet interpersonal mutual aid network has made up for the shortcomings of formal social support to a certain extent. In the risk society, it helps individuals get immediate and personalized help. In terms of online social support sources, the Internet social support of Chinese Fellow Townsman mainly comes from bridging social capital. From the perspective of online support content, the online social support of this group is mainly manifested in emotional support, companionship support, and informational support, and the role of tangible support is relatively weak. As to the support effect, through the Online social support from the group, the peers can obtain timely, diverse, and non-redundant information to help them make better decisions. But the ability of interpersonal networks to provide resources is limited. When necessary, we still need social support from the government and other formal organizations.


INTRODUCTION
In March 2020, the World Health Organization anxiously announced that the COVID-19 has the characteristics of a pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020). The pandemic has lasted for more than one year. According to WHO, as of Mid-March this year, there have been nearly 120 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, including more than 2.6 million deaths. As to when will the epidemic end? Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist of the WHO, once said: " It will be 'four or five years before ' Covid-19 is under control," (Hodgson, 2020). It was accidental that the COVID-19 from nature spread among people and then developed into a global plague. However, the spread of the epidemic of various countries and its disastrous consequences are also inevitable. At present, our society has entered the era of a global risk society characterized by high uncertainty and high complexity. As a kind of disease risk, the global spread of the COVID-19 may only be a microcosm of the global risk society.
In this background, many governments and charity organizations have taken measures to support people. However, it can't help individuals solve all problems. It's particularly evident in this epidemic. In addition to the social support provided by formal social organizations, individuals can also obtain social support to resist the social risks of interpersonal mutual aid networks. With the popularization of ICTs, we are entering a mediated society (Yuchen, 2018). Affected by the epidemic, people adopt more online virtual connections and have become more dependent on social media. Thus, we should also pay attention to the important role of online social support provided by interpersonal networks. Therefore, this study hopes to take the rural-urban immigrants in China as an example to examine the role of social support provided by the extended interpersonal network of the Internet space in resisting social risks.

LITERATURE REVIEW RISK SOCIETY THEORY IN THE CONTEXT OF POST-PANDEMIC
The Risk Society Theory in the Context of post-pandemic. The first scholar that put forward the theory of risk society was Ulrich Beck. In his view, human society and risk coexist (Beck, 1992). However, in modern society, manufactured risk replaces the external risk originating from the end of nature and the end of tradition as the dominant risk. Anthony Giddens expanded on the theory of risk society. He believes that in the second half of the 20th century, human society has become a high-risk society (Giddens, 2016). And he emphatically distinguishes the external risks and man-made risks (Giddens, 2003). External risks refer to the risks that may cause losses to humans, such as natural, physiological, or social phenomena, and are often estimated at the basis of time series. As to man-made risks, they refer to the risks arising from the impact on human development on the world, which is often risks when we lack historical experience.
On the basis of the existing theories, Niklas Luhmann summarized and put forward the risk system theory, and linked risk of human decision-making. He not only emphasized the human and social factors of risk but also emphasized the impact on the risk of the future (Luhmann, 2003). To overcome risks, it is necessary to reconstruct the functional system to control the abnormal growth of social power and interests. The research of scholars represented by Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Niklas Luhmann has promoted the development of risk society-related theories. After experiencing many global unanticipated risks, risk society has become an important concept for people to understand and analyze modern society.
According to scholars 'interpretation of risk society, we can understand the COVID-19 as a combination of "man-made risks" and " external risks". In other words, the risk of the epidemic is more like a risk that originates from nature but is amplified by human behavior or human life. The epidemic has had a profound impact on human society, and it has also affected the media industry and social information systems. We should pay attention to the impact on the COVID-19 risk of media and society.

CHANGES IN CHINESE DISSEMINATION ENVIRONMENT DURING THE POST-PANDEMIC
The epidemic has changed the Chinese media environment. On the one hand, it has caused the infodemic in terms of information dissemination, which is a combination of information and epidemic. This concept mainly refers to the process of intensifying the epidemic due to excessive information (Rothkopf, 2003). The concept originally referred to the phenomenon that after the SARAS outbreak, the epidemic was exacerbated due to excessive information. At present, the popularization of information technologies such as smartphones and social media has made Chinese society appear increasingly mediated, and communication activities have become an important part of human activities. The "infodemic" brought about by the new crown epidemic has a greater impact than atypical pneumonia. This is specifically manifested in the following three aspects: a) It brings people excessive fear and anxiety. b) It makes it difficult for people to make correct judgments and blindly follow false information to perform wrong actions. c) It causes misunderstandings among people, Intensifying the antagonism and conflict between races.
On the other hand, the epidemic has made people pay attention to maintaining offline social distance, which has also strengthened the close connection between media technology and people's lives. The acceleration of technology driven by the epidemic has accelerated the digital transformation of all walks of life, too (Lan, 2020;Shuang, 2020). At the same time, the isolation from physical space intensifies the connection with virtual space. More and more people rely on social media to obtain and produce information and rely on social terminals to engage in social activities such as communication, production, consumption, and education (Xingyu, 2020)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL NETWORK AND SOCIAL CAPITAL RELATED THEORIES IN THE CHINESE SOCIAL CONTEXT
The social network refers to a set of points or network members connected by one or more relationships (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Scholar Fei Xiaotong developed the theory of social networks based on the Chinese context. He used the concept of " Diversity-orderly Structure", which is similar to "the overlapping of egocentric networks", to explain the social network that Chinese people value blood and geography.
Social support is a concept related to social network resources. It refers to the tangible or intangible help that an individual receives from his network members (Berkman, 1984). Bjornsdottir G's research (1999) on Internet social support for patients with heart disease is the earliest research on Internet social support. The theory of social support has been recognized and accepted by Chinese scholars, who continue to develop the theory about the Chinese context. In addition to the field of health, the Chinese research objects of Internet social support also show a trend of diversification, such as the research on Internet social support of overseas students (Ran, 2017), online car Hailing drivers (Xi, 2019), migrant workers (Xin, 2017).

METHODS
In China, most of the practitioners in the printing industry near universities come from Xinhua County, Hunan Province (Junqi, 2010). The rural social network of the Chinese Xinhua immigrants formed into the basis of kinship, geography, and blood ties play an important role in the process of their integration into the city. With the development and popularization of media such as the Internet, current social relations largely rely on online and offline communication activities to maintain.
In-depth interviews are a qualitative research method that can help us understand the motives, behaviors, goals, attitudes, and feelings of interviewees and discover the inner logic of things. This paper conducted the online social support of Chinese fellow-townsman analysis via conducting online participatory observations on the QQ group of Xinhua immigrants and conducting in-depth interviews with 15 of them. The basic information on the interviewee is shown in Table I. The research will focus on answering such a question: What kind of Internet social support does the Chinese fellow-townsman use to resist uncertain risks in post-pandemic? Support behavior, support source, and support effect will be the three important dimensions of investigation.

RESULT
The social support obtained by the Chinese fellow-townsman through the Internet interpersonal mutual aid network has made up for the shortcomings of formal social support to a certain extent. In a risk society, it helps individuals get immediate and personalized help. Social capital is the direct source of social support. In terms of online social support sources, the Internet social support of Chinese fellow-townsman mainly comes from external social capital. It includes acquaintances outside the intimate circle, online networks, and channels into people to exchange information on each other, usually composed of weak ties (Bian, 2020). This also facilitates them to obtain more heterogeneous social support. As one respondent said: To be honest, when I have difficulties and need help, I tend to ask my friends with the QQ group for help. Because my relatives and I am very close, I feel uncomfortable always ask them for help. Seeking help from fellow-townsman of the same age will make me feel better. During the epidemic, I was also more inclined to express my nervousness and anxiety about the epidemic in group chats. The responses also helped me a lot. (S7).
During the epidemic, the social support of this group is mainly informational support, emotional support, and companionship support, and tangible support is in a relatively marginal position. The results of the in-depth interviews also show that Chinese fellow townsman who is good at using Internet social support can better relieve pressure, get more information, and group companionship during the epidemic, in order to deal with the isolation of the real space and the emotional aspects brought about by the epidemic. For instance, a respondent said: When the epidemic was severe, my business was very bad, and chatting with fellow townsmen in groups effectively alleviated my anxieties. (S11) Another respondent also revealed that: During the days when masks were hard to buy, the exchanges of fellow townsmen in the group made it easier for me to obtain epidemic prevention materials (S2).
As to the support effect, through the online social support from the group, the peers can obtain timely, diverse, and non-redundant information to help them make better decisions. One interviewee recalled the important role of online social support in helping him make decisions on the epidemic, he claimed that: When the epidemic was severe last year, something bad happened to the home and I was anxious to go back. I urgently need to know the epidemic prevention policy of my hometown, but the phone number of the epidemic prevention department in my hometown is always busy (That is, someone else is asking). Therefore, I asked the fellows of the group for help, and soon some of them responded to me with relevant information. I thought about it carefully and finally chose to hurry back to my hometown (S4).

DISCUSSION
The social support obtained by the Chinese Fellow Townsman through the Internet interpersonal mutual aid network has made up for the shortcomings of formal social support to a certain extent. Not only the Chinese, but Indonesians, Africans, and Europeans all have similar offline strong social relationships that extend in the Internet space, such as kinship networks, blood relationship networks, and geographic networks. We should value the important role that these online social support networks play in providing social support against unknown risks. It helps individuals get immediate and personalized help. In a risky society, we don't know which comes first, happiness or misfortune. We value the important role that these online social support networks play in providing social support against risks that are unknown to the risk community. But a good online social support community requires the joint efforts and efforts of all members. So we should be the positive provider of social support and improve the quality of resources in the online social network.

CONCLUSION
However, the ability of interpersonal networks to provide resources is limited. On the one hand, it is impossible to help individuals effectively cope with macro-social structure problems. For instance, the government introduces appropriate measures to deal with epidemics. Solving such problems still requires the support of formal organizations such as the government. On the other hand, the resources that networks provide can only help them solve the problem at hand, many of the solutions are based on personal experience, and the quality of the information is poor. There are some things that people don't share among online communities. For example, one interviewee reclaimed that: Everyone was actively speaking to the crowd, but once someone wanted to borrow money, the crowd became silent. (S2) It can be seen that when individuals need financial assistance and other rigid support, they should still seek the help of the government and other formal social organizations. In addition, the good and bad support information and the excessive dependence on the support within the groups are not conducive to the long-term development of the online group. Therefore, we must pay attention to operating our own Internet interpersonal mutual assistance network and improve the quality of social capital in it, so as to be more flexible in dealing with unknown risks.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thank the organizers of the 3rd Jogjakarta Communication Conference and Jurnal Audiens for giving me this opportunity to communicate with researchers from all over the world. At the same time, I would also like to thank the QQ group owners and interviewees who allowed me to conduct nonparticipatory observations in group chats.