Page 239 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 7. The Yihuang incident

event in the past. But nowadays, online public participation makes a social event highly

visible, which exerts pressure to all levels of the authority and forces the problem to be
investigated and solved. It is a development that represents the progress in fairness and
justice (Interviewee 4).
Throughout Yihuang incident, the well-known reporters’ Weibo live, the victims’
own microblogging account and release of the information which attracted a large num-

ber of Weibo users to support and prompt the case. ‘Safeguarding rights on Weibo’ has
become a very significant and indispensable way for Chinese netizens to protect their
civil rights in the modern information society. Safeguarding rights on Weibo means to

disclose information and influence public opinion, which is based on citizens’ expres-
sion rights and the right to information.
Weibo has been successful in pushing citizens to defend their rights for a number
of reasons. Firstly, the nature of the forced demolition is a special social problem in
contemporary China, which strongly influences urbanization. Compared with the so-

called politically sensitive issues, more people are likely to be affected by house demo-
litions. In this case, all the victims’ family wanted was to seek a legal solution to the so-
cial injustice, and it was not about politically sensitive issues such as political reforms

or the corruption of top officials within the central government. The higher political au-
thorities in China therefore had no qualms about meting out punishment to the local of-
ficials responsible for the pain suffered by the family. In my questionnaire survey, 52%
of respondents agreed with the decision made by Jiangxi Provincial Government, 43%
grudgingly accepted two officials’ dismissal, while only 5% of the respondents disap-

proved. This shows the prior purpose of the central or the higher-level government is
to maintain social stability, when they are involved in dealing with the issues or social
events, which did not cross the bottom line of questioning the Communist Party’s lead-

ership and including other politically sensitive keywords. The central government often
chooses to sacrifice local officials to appease the agitated and radical mood of internet
users and defuse heated public opinion. Therefore, if a typical social event seeks to
safeguard rights on Weibo or gain a solution in the physical world, the basic points that
the victim needs to remember are to exclude issues of a highly politically sensitive na-

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