Page 169 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 6. The Xiamen PX plant event

Figure 29. What concerned you the most about ‘PX’ project?
Figure 29 shows that 72.38% of respondents believed that the priority was to have
effective monitoring and control methods for the PX plant, specifically for pollution

and other kinds of risk that may occur during production. It also shows that the public
was more in favour of public participation and supervision rather than government su-
pervision (67.62% and 58.10%, respectively) of a controversial chemical plant like this

one. The result suggests that people expect to have more say in the decision-making
process of the construction of a plant that has potential risk, especially for those near
where they live. Though the sample size was small, it shows the popularity of grass-
roots media such as blogs and QQ groups because it is the capacity for providing infor-
mation that the public truly care about; for instance, the freelance journalist and blogger

Lianyue who listed the dangers of PX, and the QQ group which allowed information
exchange between the public.
Figure 30 shows that 65.71% of respondents followed the case because they want-

ed to contribute to the dissemination of the event, and 60.95% were driven by the sense
of involvement because they were the stakeholders and the existence of the plant was
associated with their own interest.
When it comes to a heated public event, people are willing to take part in spread-
ing information and commenting on it. If it is related to an individual’s specific interest,

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