Page 101 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 4. Methodology

viewees were also asked to rank these factors and explain the priority consideration in

the operation of new media companies; in other words, which of the three parts of the
triangle takes the bigger proportion of the power, and whether ICT had changed that.
The interview also included the practitioners’ comments on the interaction between the
public and the official sectors via the internet, the regular pattern of the interaction, and
the chances of success or failure in online public participation.

The interview also explored the coordination between media companies and the
government’s censorship policy. It looked at the information control and which govern-
ment departments that internet media companies need to deal with, as well as the re-

sponsible departments for the supervision, reward and penalty of the companies. It also
sought to explore the government’s intention in the control of the internet media and
the particular measures taken to fulfil that intention. Finally, it asked the interviewees
to evaluate the current environment of China’s cyberspace, assess whether it was more
liberal or more rigid, and speculate on whether a public sphere exists in China’s cyber-

space.

4.5 Case studies

As a method for in-depth investigation, the case study provides a highly detailed,

contextualised analysis of an event combined with data, investigators and theories.
Feagin et al. (1991) argued that the case study method permits researchers to discover
complex sets of decisions and to recount the effect of decisions over time, and political
and social scientists pay close attention to such phenomena.

Some authors supported the idea of furthering understanding by focusing on the
details of particular cases (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Stake, 2000). Flyvbjerg (2001) argued that
social science should not try to emulate the natural sciences in a search for context-in-
dependent predictive theories, but rather should concern itself more with producing

context-dependent knowledge. This means making greater use of case studies as de-
tailed exemplars from which to better understand a phenomenon.
Stake (2000) suggested that:
‘a case is often thought of as a constituent member of a target population. And

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