Page 256 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

community. It is the most straightforward online public sphere, as its primary function

is to allow people to talk to each other timely. Information and opinions regarding pub-
lic events are exchanged directly. Such discussion facilitates online public participation
to its widest extent, and public opinion can thus be formed. QQ also enables thematic
groups to organise online or sometimes offline public participation activities conven-
iently and securely, as can be seen with the QQ group named ‘Return My Clear Water

and Blue Sky in Xiamen’, which generated heated discussion on environmental issues
in Xiamen and led to offline demonstration.

8.2.1.3 The era of the microblog (Weibo)

Everyone can be involved as the We Media in the microblog (Weibo) era. All us-
ers can post information on their own Weibo accounts as citizen news at the first time
when a social event takes place. First-hand information is directly disseminated by the
victim or by a citizen mouthpiece authorised by the victim, such as Deng Fei in the

Yihuang case. A sphere of public opinion is quickly formed through the accumulated
comments, forwards, promotions (in the form of ‘thumbs up’), and new discussion
posts made by Weibo users. In contrast to BBS/forums, blogs and QQ which mainly
gather people with common interests and concerns, the user base of Weibo is much

more diverse. However, opinion leaders, i.e., popular Weibo accounts with large num-
ber of followers, still play a dominant role in guiding public opinion. The contribution
of Weibo is that everyone can implement their right of freedom of speech whenever and
wherever possible, including the stakeholders of social events, ordinary internet users,

opinion leaders and government officials. It gathers different parties on one platform so
that information is much more centralised in the sense that facts can be revealed more
accurately at a faster speed. For example, victims of social events can describe the en-
tire process and voice demands from their own perspectives, while media accounts and

government official accounts can publish their perspectives of the causes and effects of
events as well. Public opinion formed on Weibo is the result of multifaceted informa-
tion, which promotes more effective and extensive public participation in return.
Weibo thus has great potential for affecting both the individual and society. As a

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