In 2013, Zhang Jiajia 张嘉佳’s book I Belonged to You (从你的全世界路过； thereafter Belonged) became a huge hit and a miracle of publication. In 2013 after half a year in circulation, the paper print sold more than 2,000,000 copies and was soon adapted to two movies. In 2014, both the kindle and paper edition of Belonged won No.1 for the best books list on Amazon China. Zhang Jiajia’s incredible success is a miracle, and it can only happen with the easy access of Internet. In addition to that, the lifestyle Belonged depicts is what post-80s and post-90s generations in China are experiencing now. My thesis studies how the Internet and Sina Weibo platform make the popularity of Belonged possible and why post-80s and post-90s readers from Sina Weibo like this kind of story. By investigating the reasons behind this book’s popularity, I argue that Internet literature and literary works in a similar genre to Belonged fulfill the emotional needs of post-80s and post-90s generations, which the literature works written by writers who receive government stipends cannot meet.

According to ¡§the research of Internet users in Taiwan¡¨ by Institute for Information Industry, the number of Internet users in Taiwan has reached 8,590 thousand, and the prevalence rate was 38 percent at December, 2003. And the broadband users also reached 2,100 thousand. As it, we could figure out that the importance of Internet is keep growing. Since the significance and specialty of Internet, many scholars have begun to study for the communication behaviors on Internet. Computer mediated communication contains many kinds of activities, including chat room, BBS, online game, etc. Internet literature is also a kind of computer mediated communication behavior. Traditionally, literature is purely a personal behavior, but the spread and publication of writings is depending on publishers. Therefore, not all people could let their writings be published. Nonetheless, in the world of Internet, everyone could put his writings on BBS or websites. As the characteristics and probabilities of traditional and Internet literature are different, I would focus on the writer of Internet literature, and try to understand their personalities, motivations and behaviors by using both interview in depth and questionnaire. I hope to build the total map of Internet literature from this research. From the research, I found the backgrounds and personalities of Internet writers seem the same. Over half of the writers are students, between 16-30 years old, and have Internet using experience over 3 years. The genres of their writings are mostly romantic novels. For the motivations of writing, ¡§writing is its own purpose¡¨ is the most accepted motivation. Besides, most writers tend to interact with other writers or readers, and adjust their material and style of writings from the interaction. Therefore, Internet literature is not a single-way transmission behavior, but a double-ways social interaction process.