Page 233 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 7. The Yihuang incident

carries individuals’ reactions to the social and public events in real life. A leap in the

development of internet users and a diverse trend in netizens’ activities has already
been seen in recent years. Weibo provides a macro environment for people to take part
in public events, to express opinions and to exchange information. Secondly, Weibo is
the preferred space for people to unburden personal feelings. People use it to express
their feelings for the events that took place in the physical space – as a witness, a privy,

a victim or an activist. Thirdly, the scale of Weibo has already surpassed the traditional
media. It has almost reached the maximum level of openness and autonomy, factors
that used to restrict new media market have little influence on Weibo.

Table 4. The distribution statistics on the ‘Yihuang incident’ via main online platforms (by 25th April 2011)
(Shi, Hu and Wang, 2011).
Online Platform News Comments BBS/Forums Sina Weibo Blog
Statistics 7,112 33,495 44,990 181
In 2010, online media platforms could be generally categorised into four groups:

news comments, BBS/forums, Sina Weibo, and blogs. As seen in Table 4, these me-
dia platforms demonstrated different level of performance in the dissemination of the
Yihuang incident. Weibo carried the largest information flow. Since the live broadcast
of ‘The Battle in the Ladies Room’, users made the most of the platform by clicking

‘thumbs up’ on posts relating to the development of the incident. They also commented
and reposted to express their attitudes, promote information flow and expand influence.
Weibo users followed every stage of the incident and made Weibo a central sphere in
which public opinion was formed. (Shi, Hu and Wang, 2011)

Based on the Yihuang case, I have found a series of characteristics to explain the
establishment of Weibo as an online public sphere:
The resonance of topic. It refers to the psychological condition of whether peo-
ple can find something that relates themselves to the topic. It is the principal factor

that determines whether public opinion can be formed in the online space provided by
Weibo. The more psychological relatedness the topic has, the more likely it can attract
the public’s attention. The more people are mentally stimulated, the higher the chance
that they will express their views and create more traffic on Weibo. Hence, it is more

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