Page 215 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 7. The Yihuang incident

lighted the phenomenon and explained that, ‘the advent of the internet makes it possi-

ble for people to make a direct voice, not something passed on by the third-person. It
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is a huge progress’ (Interviewee 6) . It is acknowledged by his peer as well, ‘internet
provides a channel, a medium, a platform and most importantly, a bridge for message
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to be delivered to the target’ (Interviewee 3) .

Figure 48. Channels of accessing information about the Yihuang incident.
Considering public participation in the Yihuang case in a real sense, it is necessary
to observe the degree of involvement between social networking sites and their users.
As Figure 48 illustrates, 49.10% of respondents said that they got to know the develop-

ment of the Yihuang case through Weibo and other social networking sites. Compared
with other relatively developed new media [BBS/forums (27.30%), SMS platform
(23.60%), and blogs (9.10%)], it shows a visible growth in public participation for Wei-
bo users. A noteworthy point is that blogs had already reached their peak at the time,

whereas Weibo was in its infancy. To explain the gap between blogs and Weibo (9.10%
and 49.10%, respectively) in distributing information for the Yihuang case, one fact
needs to be considered: a majority of blog users moved to Weibo in the earlier stage.
Because of the features of Weibo, especially the instantaneity, high interactivity and

the chain reaction brought by the many-to-many communication model, opinion leaders
53 Translation provided by the author.
54 Translation provided by the author.

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