Page 131 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 5. The Sun Zhigang incident

sensitive social events. As shown in Figure 11, the questionnaire survey shows that

85.71% of the respondents believed that the Sun Zhigang case has promoted improve-
ments in the legal system and legitimate rights in China. In addition, 84.76% indicated
a willingness of continuing to follow cases on legitimate rights through traditional me-
dia or internet media; and 49.52% demonstrated a proactive attitude by searching the

related information on their own (Figure 12).
The successful collaboration between online and offline participation in the Sun
Zhigang case dispelled the original ‘security’ concern among the public and showed the

public that it is not dangerous to take part in an online campaign. The diverse forms of
participation also increased the coverage of social actors by embracing different social
levels of citizens, such as the scholars in law studies and professional journalists who
contributed to the offline campaign, grassroots citizens – the major force of the online

public opinion – and the victims of the event – the initial information source. Such col-
laboration can force government officials to react to the public’s appeal. The campaign
is not only about how to express dissatisfaction and rage among the public, but to come
up with explicit demands and feasible solutions to the social event which resulted by

the collective efforts between common netizens, intellectuals and opinion leaders.
As Interviewee 2 stated, among the three cases in my book, only the Sun Zhi-
gang incident resulted a significant change in public policy: ‘The achievement was
mainly facilitated by the role of traditional media. The social campaign on new media

platforms has not maturely developed yet’. Thus, the Sun Zhigang case is seen as a
successful example of public participation in the mediation of both traditional and new
media and also a satisfied result of the collaboration between online and offline cam-

paign. It has had profound impact on different fields, including law, media, legitimate
rights, and public policy.

5.3.2 The establishment of an online or quasi-public sphere in China

As summarised in the literature review chapter, there are three key elements in
the public sphere: the public, public opinion and the public medium. The first factor,

the ‘public’, refers to a certain number of citizens who gather voluntarily, are not con-

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