Page 132 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

strained by the government or any kind of political authority, and put individual or

group interests aside to rationally debate on general societal problems for the sake of
the common good. Secondly, ‘public opinion’ signifies contention centring on critical
consciousness, which means to criticise, supervise and respond to the government’s ac-
tions. The third factor, ‘public medium’, refers to the platform or channel where public
opinion is cultivated and disseminated. It is a materialised form of the public sphere

and often is the body or symbol for the public sphere. In the following sections, I dis-
cuss the three key elements in the Sun Zhigang case to examine the existence of public
sphere in China.

5.3.2.1 The public in the Sun Zhigang case

To investigate the characteristics of the ‘public’ and to test the premise of the
‘public sphere’ in Habermas’s definition, my questionnaire survey included three ques-
tions about the respondents’ educational background, current occupation and income

level. The result shows that 94.29% of respondents who know or have participated in
the Sun case received a university education; the reason might be that better educated
people are more likely to concern themselves about such public events. It might also
be important that the internet was still a new invent to Chinese netizens at that time. A

majority of the general public did not have knowledge of or access to the internet, let
alone using it as a tool for public participation. On the contrary, it is easier for people
with higher education background to learn and possess the ability to perform online
participation. It also implies that higher education provokes and encourages people’s

awareness in participating in public events.
In terms of the respondents’ occupation, approximately 73.33% of them were pro-
fessionals, students or civil servants. The ‘other’ occupations (about 6%) were college
lecturers and practitioners in the financial and IT industries.

The design of the question on respondents’ income levels is based on the 2014
Chinese per-capita income among 31 provinces by Xinhuanet.com. It shows that
58.10% of the respondents had an annual income level above the average of developed
cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. However, 22.86% of respondents’ annual income

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