Page 238 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

The narrowly defined socioeconomic or environmental injustice is the core rea-

son that drive most protest cases, whereas the pursuit for solutions to normative claims
within the current Chinese political system is less visible (Lu et al., 2012), consequent-
ly, in more recent online protests, many participants have not necessarily been direct
victims of injustice or deprivation.
On 10 October 2010, the Jiangxi provincial party committee announced the dis-

missals of Qiu from the position of Yihuang county party secretary and Su from the po-
sition of Yihuang county mayor (Bi, 2014). Although the announcement did not include
any official interpretation of the Yihuang event, it is the first one among the nine similar

forced demolition cases in recent years in which the government officials in command
received punishment (ibid).
The Tragedy of Self-hurting on Weibo Live, the influential central-level legal
news publication Law and Life, commented that the Yihuang event reflected the power
of Weibo to safeguard citizens’ rights and interests: if Weibo is absent from the event,

people would not have been exposed to the tragedy of the Zhong family and the jour-
nalists would not have the opportunity to gain news clue and make immediate report;
the Zhong sisters would end up of being caught and forcefully returned to Yihuang, and

the event would close lamentably (Bi, 2014). In the previous eight events, information
about these cases were deleted and the government prohibited any new posts of such is-
sues. The public knew little about what happened to the victims. Therefore, Weibo pro-
vided a space for the grassroots to disseminate information and gain exposures, while
dodging the censorship in China. Everyone is empowered to be a ‘journalist’ and to

provide information to the public. It has changed how information is accessed, as well
as the communication forms among the government, media, and individuals.
From BBS/forums to Weibo, the number of internet users has increased explo-

sively. With the features of We Media penetrated into people’s daily life, public partic-
ipation becomes much easier and more convenient, e.g., safeguarding one’s civil rights
(Interviewee 8). Assuming there is no internet, Weibo or WeChat, the gap between
government and public will remain distant. Social events will rarely be noticed by the
higher authority. It was easy for local governments to conceal and suppress a social

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