Page 252 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

The three cases selected in this research are notable landmarks in ICT-mediated

public participation and represent the historical significance of public events against the
backdrop of China’s rapid economic development. They each demonstrate the interac-
tive relationships in this triangular framework.
As the Sun Zhigang case shows, since China is a centralism country, people do
not have many ways to express themselves, especially to criticise the government or

to comment on official policies. But the emergence of social media has changed the
communication pattern from the old top-down approach to a new bottom-up approach.
This has changed the public’s position on interaction with the government from passive

message receivers to active message providers and disseminators. The government’s
attitude to public participation has also changed from strict control to supervision and
a willingness to negotiate. It has become common for officials to collect public opinion
through the internet.
The second case study focused on the Xiamen PX plant controversy to examine

the relationship between the government and the media companies. Here, the media
represents the internet companies who provide social networking services and plat-
forms for information flow. I found that there has been no significant change in the rela-

tionship between the government and new media since the beginning of the digital age
in China: the government continues to regulate the internet companies, and the internet
companies usually obey the government’s regulations.
In the third case study – the Yihuang incident – the relationship between the media
companies and the public was examined. It demonstrated a symbiosis between internet

companies and the public. The widely developed ICTs empowered netizens to express
their opinions through social media in safer and more effective ways, especially in the
context of controversial and sensitive public events, while the media companies gained

more profits by attracting more users to provide the huge volume of network flow while
fulfilling their media obligations. Here, the precondition of the satisfied relationship be-
tween media companies and internet users is that they must not challenge the CCP and
the central government.
For the Chinese central government, the ‘media’ is an implement that can help to

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