Page 159 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 6. The Xiamen PX plant event

information about the report (Hung, 2013).

Lian published a series of blogs which focused on public safety and environmen-
tal pollution. On 29 March 2007, He published a blog appealing to Xiamen residents
to save themselves (Hung, 2013). Over the next few months, visits to Lian’s blog
increased as the site became an important source of Xiamen PX-related information,
particularly in Xiamen itself, where the content was pasted across local online chat

rooms. As Lian aggregated news stories on his blog, he also wrote a number of critical
editorials for traditional commercial newspapers outside his home province, including
Hunan’s Xiaoxiang Morning Post and Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily. The

posts on Lian’s online personal blog could also be found on a few traditional media
platforms (Gang and Bandurski, 2011).
A local resident Wu Xian set up a QQ group named ‘Return My Clear Water and
Blue Sky in Xiamen’ and it attracted many members (Huang, 2010). A few other web-
sites including the popular local internet forum Little Fish Community and the public

BBS of Xiamen University all reposted Lian’s blogs. The citizens in Xiamen, who had
no previous knowledge or information about the PX construction, were alerted of the
imminent threat to their local environment.

This suggests that, in the PX plant case, there was a mutual relationship between
the traditional media and new media. When the traditional media was banned from
publishing relevant reports, the new media was able to disseminate social events be-
cause of its openness, autonomy and high interactivity. Lian published articles on his
blog which encouraged internet users to comment and forward his posts. These blogs

were spread to other forums and online chat groups, which promoted more discussions
and thus formed a series of online public participation with significant influence.
The dynamics of reporting in the traditional and new media are similar. They start

by covering first-hand news when a social event breaks out, which helps increase the
view rate, click rate and audience’s comments, meaning more profits can be expected.
However, the difference is that in a centralism country, traditional media suffers more
restrictions and stricter control by the government. Local traditional media platforms
do not have autonomy in deciding whether to report a sensitive social event due to the

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