Page 241 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 7. The Yihuang incident

the concerns from all the parties on Weibo added pressure on the local government, ul-

timately increasing the possibility that their demands would be fulfilled.
Finally, Weibo, as the new technology representative of We Media, provides the
possibility for breaking through the unreasonable information block. In the era of tradi-
tional media, individual citizens lack the right to express their own opinion. Although
they can ask for help from the traditional media, it is useless and disappointing to wait

for a reply for such a long time. Besides, in the traditional media, all news should be
censored by the editor or the ‘gatekeeper’ from the leadership level, and should follow
the instructions issued by the information management department. However, We Me-

dia microblogging has changed the pattern of the right to speak which used to hold by
the monopoly reporter editing. The victims could release the relevant information in-
dividually, freely, and in real-time. Once it caused concern among other internet users,
the information would be quickly diffused. This type of communication is difficult to
block and censor, so eventually it will form substantial public opinion. Internet users

who spread information through Weibo even have the ability to organise real-life activ-
ism to support and influence the event from the virtual network space to the physical
world. The Yihuang case only involved county-level government and officials, who

were not powerful enough to control information or censorship on Weibo operated by
the dominant internet companies in the more developed cities, nor were they aware that
140-word posts (no word limitation since 2016) on micro-blogging would trigger great
public pressure nationwide, or that the updated information could be easily disseminat-
ed without administrative interference and become known to public opinion watchers at

higher levels of the government.
My survey found that up to 64% of the respondents believed it is useful to use
Weibo to assert one’s rights and eventually gain a satisfactory result. A quarter believed

that asserting one’s rights on Weibo is extremely effective, but only 4% of the respond-
ents held the opinion that it is useless and meaningless to use Weibo to assert one’s
rights. This shows that in today’s We Media age, most internet users would choose
Weibo as the first choice to release first-hand information when they are facing injustice
in such social incidents, and also are eager to be followed and forwarded. Therefore,

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