Page 150 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

most of the cases, what makes the public unsatisfied is the government’s attitudes.

They are angry because instead of correcting, local governments tend to cover up
the mistake. The win-win method for the government is to face public events di-
rectly, react promptly before things getting worse’ .
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In terms of the government-public relationship, Interviewee 3 believed that:
‘it is a dynamic relationship. The government plays a dominant role in the trian-

gular system, while the other two parties are the controlled objects. However, the
growing trend is that the public also use the internet to monitor the government’s
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performance’ .
In the Sun Zhigang case, the final result shows that the evolution of the informa-
tion regime has promoted changes in the properties of government-public interaction.

5.4 Summary

In this chapter, I analysed the government-public interrelationship through the

investigation of the Sun Zhigang case. As an early grassroots campaign through social
media, it resulted directly in the change of a law and represented the beginning of a
bottom-up approach for public participation. Sun’s death triggered the social campaign
both online and offline. In the initial stage of the internet age in China, explosive news

like the abnormal death of an ordinary citizen could easily arouse public opinion. A series
of spontaneous interactions between the traditional and new media took place. Prior to
the popularisation of the internet, the state-controlled traditional media mainly func-
tioned in two landscapes: pro-government propaganda channel and the commercialised

pattern. However, the Sun Zhigang case showed the technological empowerment which
enabled the bottom-up approach from normal netizens to the local or central govern-
ment. It represented a transition process in which the public transferred from the initial
message receivers to information producers and disseminators. Public opinion was then

delivered to the government through social campaign. Hence, the new bottom-up ap-
proach – ‘the public-generated communication in negotiating with the government’ –

23 Translation provided by the author.
24 Translation provided by the author.

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