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Chapter 4. Methodology
spectives, attempting to find out how public participation influences the government’s
decision-making using the device of public consensus via the China’s cyberspace.
There is also a comparison of the cases to determine the conditions and challenges in
the process of changing the government’s decision-making and the influential factors
contributing to the netizens’ behaviour and the forms of public activity to test if media
has made a difference.
4.6 Ethical considerations
All data gathered from participants is confidential. All respondents in the research
are anonymous and participation was voluntary. Prior to data collection, a declaration
was made to indicate that all the information collected is merely for academic research
and the respondents were provided with an information sheet that explained the aim of
the book, the research procedure and other related issues.
The data will never be shared, and will be safely stored on a secured computer.
When the research was completed, the questionnaires from respondents and interview
records were destroyed. Ethical approval of the research was obtained from the Durham
University ethics committee on 03/03/2016.
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