Page 106 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 5. The Sun Zhigang incident

5.1 Introduction

In August 2014, Chinese president Xi Jinping emphasised the need for tradition-

al media to adopt ‘internet thinking’ to speed up the convergence between traditional
and new media, and to build up several influential media groups (Guo and Gu, 2014).
The successful collective efforts made by traditional media and the new internet media
emerged in 2003, and the coverage of the death of Sun Zhigang most clearly reflects

the collaborative effects of the traditional media and the internet. It illustrates the un-
precedented opportunities empowered by BBS and forums and other information and
communication technologies during the booming age of China’s internet development
and the active participation of different sectors of society, including students, media

professionals, public intellectuals, scholars, law professionals and ordinary citizens.
This book uses three cases to present the triangular system in ICT-mediated pub-
lic participation: government, media and the public. The case of Sun Zhigang is one of
the earliest examples of how a popular outcry online prompted a change in government

policy in China (Chung, 2008). Thus, the incident can be regarded as a telling example
of the changing relationships between the public and the government through mass
media. It helps to explore why the death of Sun Zhigang changed relevant laws and
regulations, even though civil society in the Western sense has not formed yet in a cen-

tralism country like China. This case also inspires discussion about the formation of an
online public sphere and the emergence of a quasi-civil society in China.
In this chapter, I first contextualise the case study by chronicling the incident, then
elaborate on the changing role of Chinese netizens during the Sun Zhigang incident,

drawing on the results of the survey, and finally introduce the features and the causes of
a new communication approach between the Chinese government and public.
The chapter also investigates the establishment of an online public sphere in

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