Page 228 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

working that forms a social behaviour in which information is distributed on the inter-

net and then transferred to the whole society (Castells, 2008).
Interviewees from the media industry also highlighted the 5A influence on Weibo.
Interviewee 6 demonstrated that
‘the advent of Weibo led to the explosive growth of information flow on the inter-
net. It used to take at least half a day or one day for a social event to be exposed to

the public. But real-time updates of information on Weibo make it an immediate
effect: a social event is known by the public as soon as it takes place. People can
immediately post comments and spread information to a wider range of audience.

The current situation is that everyone can act as a journalist or a commentator.
Such fresh pattern is the reason of information explosion on Weibo’ .
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The argument is supported by the peers as well. Interviewee 8 indicated that the
greatest contribution of the internet is that it solved the problem of asymmetric infor-
mation.

‘It is mainly reflected in the We Media age. Because everyone can be a reporter.
When an incident happens, netizens can take photos or videos, then post it on
Weibo or on a more private place – WeChat Moments. For these social events that

attracted extensive attention, they came into notice because of the huge amount
of repost. The difference is that, traditionally, mainstream media is the source that
provokes attention, but nowadays, it is the user-generated content that causes wide
attention. It is even referenced by traditional media and finally leads to a series of
investigation by media professionals (Interviewee 7) .’
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Therefore, Weibo has enormous potential impact on both the individual and soci-
ety. As a social networking platform in the virtual environment, Weibo keeps the con-
nection between various levels of communication, including individual-to-individual,

individual-to-organisation and individual-to-public, which consolidates the collabora-
tion effect of the internet on these different parties. The following section elaborates on
how the collaboration effect is achieved taking the Yihuang case as an example.

58 Translation provided by the author.
59 Translation provided by the author.

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