传统媒体的根基在内容，新媒体的核心却是人，网络文化是以人为导向的文化。以网络媒介为载体和平台的新媒体艺术样态——网络剧的主要受众是出生并成长于网络时代的青年人。以互联网为核心的新媒介技术的发展给了青年群体更多自由和权力，技术赋权之下，青年群体以网络影视为阵地和武器展开文化实践，不断拓展青年亚文化的生存空间。本论文以中国网络剧所反映和创造的青年亚文化为研究视角和研究对象，用兼具中西方文化基底的亚文化理论研究和观照中国的网络剧创作与传播，以跨文化和跨学科的研究方法探讨青年亚文化与中国网络剧作品、网络剧传播和接受以及社会文化生态之间的互文关系，解析青年亚文化在中国网络剧中的呈现与表达，生产与消费,并在此基础上挖掘网络剧发展所折射出的时代文化特征，透视青年群体和社会整体的审美文化心理。

网络时代，网络空间成为中国青年文化的主阵地。作为社会文化结构的重要组成部分，青年亚文化在新媒介时代实现了由“小众化”向“普泛化”的重大转向，亚文化在整个社会文化结构中的地位明显提升。网络媒介用人性化的功能设置、“傻瓜式”的技术模糊了现实社会中身份、性别、地位等因素带来的阶层差异，社会开放语境下青年群体的广泛参与最终将亚文化的书写蔓延至传统亚文化的小圈子和固定阶层之外，使之成为青年群体共同分享和参与的一种文化样态，亚文化的呈现和表达方式更加自由、多样，类型和风格更加多元，多向交互传播和即时传播成为亚文化传播的新趋势。新媒介语境下，网络世界的虚拟、分裂和全球化，青年网民文化趣味的多元、群体身份的游离和交叉，都使得青年亚文化的“抵抗”精神开始弱化，娱乐成为亚文化的手段和目的。青年是未来世界的主宰，青年亚文化对未来文化可能的涉及，对社会文化结构的冲击，以及“娱乐至死”引发的“道德恐慌”，都启发我们以“青年亚文化”为视角和方法论来审视网络剧这一青年话语实践。青年亚文化是网络剧的文化基因、内容资源，更是网络剧的呈现和表达方式，是网络剧存在形态、叙事价值和审美意义的体现。

选取“青年亚文化”作为剖析网络剧的视角和切口，具有重要的理论、实践和文化意义。从理论价值来看，青年亚文化研究长期以来以研究青年人的“小众”文化为专长，本文将研究触角延伸至网络剧这一以青年观众为主同时强调细分受众又追求圈层突破的大众艺术形式，实现西方理性认知与中国目前偏感性的网络剧艺术实践的有机结合，审视青年亚文化理论在网络时代和现实中国的发展变迁，形成具有独立学术品格和现实指导意义的研究方法，使中国网络剧的审美内蕴和文化意义透过“青年”得以展现、传播。同时，青年亚文化理论天然具有中西方结合的跨文化基底，理论本身的多面向和多维度有利于拓展中国网络剧理论研究的维度和空间，完成西方经典理论与本土学术话语的沟通和呼应。从网络剧的生产和传播实践来看，青年是这一新媒体艺术形态的主要创作者、传播者和接受者。以青年亚文化这一青年人专属的文化系统为视角来观照中国的网络剧实践，不仅挖掘网络剧在内容、形式、传播、接受等方面与传统电视剧的联系与区别，也能够更加清晰地揭示网络剧与青年群体的天然相关，透视网络剧对青年群体情感和审美需求的全面满足，以及对青年群体过分迎合带来的审美和文化危机。目前中国网络剧的理论研究中，虽不乏基于受众视角的探讨，但多以传播学维度进行分析，缺乏以青年亚文化理论为视角的深入系统地研究，为本文的写作预留了空间。

本论文共分为五章，遵循由表及里，层层递进的原则，深入解读和挖掘青年亚文化勾连起的贯通网络剧创作、传播、接受全过程的这一独特文化场域：第一章通过梳理中国青年文化变迁、网络时代青年亚文化的转向和中国网络剧二十年发展流变，探讨青年亚文化与网络剧在网络文化生态下的共生关系。第二章从青年亚文化与网络剧的共生关系出发，分析青年亚文化对网络剧内容生成的直接影响，青年亚文化成为网络剧的文化基因和文化底色。第三章聚焦网络剧文本，从网络剧台词与人物、叙事与风格、制作与形式等方面阐释和分析中国网络剧对青年亚文化的影像呈现和书写；第四章从以消费为核心的网络剧的传播实践出发，探讨网络剧传播过程中不同消费景观和消费方式对青年亚文化的表征和建构；第五章立足中国网络剧的现实发展，总结其审美特征，在肯定其审美意义和文化价值的基础上对其发展过程中暴露出的审美文化症候进行反思批判，以寻得网络剧审美建构的有效路径。

本研究的创新意义在于将青年亚文化的理论视点引入到中国网络剧的研究，以“青年亚文化”这一更贴近网络剧受众的视角重新审视中国网络剧，用“青年亚文化”的理论范畴来架构研究和写作，通过揭示青年亚文化与中国网络剧的文化关联，对中国网络剧进行批判式分析与考察，彰显文化研究的批判性旨趣和实践性品格；运用西方理论同时结合中国的现实语境进行本土化延伸和发展，有利于东西方学术话语的对话，并体现中国青年亚文化的独特性；青年亚文化视角下的网络剧批判研究，不单是关于网络剧作品的本体分析或对其传播过程的关注，而是将网络剧生产、传播和消费的全过程视为一个整体进行观照，也是对网络时代集合了生产者和消费者双重身份，既为主体又为客体的青年群体的一次文化审视， 因此既能阐明网络剧作为一种艺术形式的本体特征和审美文化意义，又能剖析时代语境下的青年文化心理，同时以青年亚文化为参照，描摹出当今社会的主要文化样貌。

While content constitutes the foundation of traditional media, at the core of new media is people. Internet culture is a people-oriented culture. As a new media art with online media as its carrier and platform - online drama’s audience is mostly young people born and grown up in the Internet age. The development of new media technology with the Internet as its core has given the youth more freedom and power, and with technical empowerment, the youth have carried out cultural practice with online film and drama, and continuously expanded the space for their  youth subcultures. The research perspective and subject of this thesis is youth subculture reflected in and created by Chinese online drama, and subculture theories both from China and the West are applied to study the creation and dissemination of Chinese network drama. It also explores youth subculture and Chinese online drama works with cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research methods, examines the intercultural relationship between the spread and consumption of online drama and the social and cultural ecology, the presentation and expression of youth subculture in Chinese online drama, production and consumption, and further, the cultural characteristics of our time reflected along the development of online drama, and the aesthetic and cultural psychology of the youth and our society as a whole.

In the Internet Era, cyberspace has become the frontiers of Chinese youth culture. As an important part of social culture, youth subculture has realized a major shift from the "minority" to the "majority" in the new media era, and the social status of subculture has been significantly enhanced. Through smart agenda-setting and universally accessible technologies, the Internet media blurs the class differences brought about by the identity, gender, social stratum and other factors in real life, and the extensive participation of the youth in the context of social openness will finally spread the impact of subcultures to a larger audience, and makes it a cultural pattern that all youth share and participate in. The presentation and expression of subcultures are more free, diverse, with more types and styles, and its multiply interactive and instant reach becomes a new trend of subcultural communication. In the context of the new media, the virtual, divisive and globalized cyber world, the diversity of the cultural interests of young netizens, and the freedom and intersection of group identity have started weakening youth subculture’s rebellion, and entertainment becomes the means and purpose of subculture. The youth is the master of the world’s future, youth subculture may be involved in future culture, the impact on the social and cultural structure, and "amusing ourselves to death" caused by the "moral panic", all lead us to examine online drama from the methodological perspective of youth subculture. Youth subculture is the cultural gene and resource of online drama, and also its presentation and expression, and reflects online drama’s the existing form, narrative value and aesthetic significance.

To study online drama from the perspective of "youth subculture" is of theoretical, practical and cultural significance. For theoretical value, the research of youth subculture has long been specialized in the study of young people's "minority" culture, this thesis extends the research to online drama, which is a mass culture that focuses on the young audience and emphasizes its specified sub-audiences. The thesis combines the rational analysis of Western theories and the vivacious online drama of China, and examines the development and change of youth subculture theories in the Internet era of today’s China, and to form a research method with innovative scholarly character and practical value, so that the aesthetic and cultural significance of Chinese online drama can be displayed and disseminated through the youth. At the same time, youth subculture theories possess the cross-cultural basis of a combination of China and the West by nature, the manifold theories themselves are conducive to expanding the dimensions and field of the theoretical research of Chinese online drama, and promoting the exchange and interaction between Western classical theory and Chinese academic discourse. From the standpoint of the production and reception of online drama, the youth is the main creator， communicator, and recipient of this new media art form. Viewed from the perspective of youth subculture – an exclusive cultural system of the youth, the study not only attempts to discover the connections and differences between online drama and traditional TV drama in terms of content, form, dissemination, and reception, but also to reveal in a more clear manner the correlativity between online drama and the youth, the full satisfaction that online drama brings to meet the emotional and aesthetic needs of the youth, as well as the aesthetic and cultural crises that may be caused by overly catering to the youth’s taste. In terms of existing research of Chinese online drama, there has been plenty of discussion based on the audience perspective, which is more often than not based on communication studies methods, and there has been little in-depth and systematic effort conducted based on youth subculture theories, which is precisely what this thesis sets out to do.

This thesis is divided into 5 parts, progressively dealing with the unique cultural form of online drama from its production, reception, to consumption: Chapter 1 offers a discussion of the symbiotic relationship between youth subculture and online drama in the Internet cultural ecology by a chronological examination of the overall development of Chinese youth culture, youth culture in the Internet Era, and the development of Chinese online drama over the past two decades. Following the symbiotic relationship between youth subculture and online drama, Chapter 2 proceeds to analyze the direct influence that youth subculture has had upon the content of online drama, and how youth subculture has been combined into the memes and codes of online drama. Chapter 3 focuses on the drama text, and elucidates how Chinese online drama interprets and dramatizes youth subculture in terms of dialogue, character, narrative, style, production, artistic approach, and so on. Chapter 4 investigates how the various consumption landscapes and patterns represent and construct youth subculture along the reception of online drama, which is practically consumption-driven in nature. Finally, in view of the practices and developments of Chinese online drama, Chapter 5 summarizes its aesthetic achievements, recognizes its aesthetic and cultural significance on one hand, and criticizes and reflects on its shortcomings exposed along its development on the other, in hopes of finding more efficient approaches of artistic construction for online drama.

The innovations of this study include the introduction of youth subculture theories to the research of Chinese online drama, re-examining Chinese online drama from the perspective of "youth subculture", which lays more stress on the audience of online drama, applying the theoretical framework of "youth subculture" to structure the research and writing, and carrying out a critical analysis and investigation of Chinese online drama by revealing the cultural connections of youth subculture and Chinese online drama, which also highlights the critical interest and practical character of cultural studies. The thesis combines Western theories and China's situation and pushes forward theoretical extension and development, which is conducive to the dialogue of East and West academic discourse, and reflects the uniqueness of Chinese youth subculture. When studying online drama from the perspective of youth subculture, the mission is not just a text analysis of the online drama and its reception. Online drama’s production, communication and consumption should be regarded as a whole, and it’s also a cultural examination of the youth in question, who have the dual identity as both the producer and the consumer, or as both the subject and the object. Therefore, the thesis can not only cast light on the ontological characteristics and aesthetic significance of the online drama as an art form, but also analyze the youth cultural psychology in the contemporary context, offering a depiction of our society's current cultural landscape with reference to youth subculture at the same time.