Page 258 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

message producers and disseminators, which indicates the technological empowerment

and has led to the establishment of a bottom-up communication approach between
the public and government officials. The public’s messages have been delivered to the
central government through social campaigns which has fostered the launch of online
activism and public participation. This also indicates that the negotiation space between
government and public has changed from the almost zero interaction to possible en-

larged interaction. Individual civil participation has also been gradually improved and
has become more and more obvious, as can be seen from the three case studies. In the
Sun Zhigang case, internet users were guided by professional media and famous intel-

lectuals, but in the Xiamen and Yihuang cases, the individual internet user carried more
weight in promoting the events.
Overall, the three case studies have demonstrated that, alongside the development
of ICT, it appeared a general trend that Chinese people gained more opportunities to
speak, to debate, and to criticise social events. As aforementioned, from web portals

and BBS/forum era to blog and QQ era to the final Weibo era, the use of media plat-
forms in social events evolved from mainly ‘releasing information’ to ‘discussing and
organising offline campaign’ to ‘involving different stakeholders in the same platform

to form more comprehensive public opinion’. In the former two eras, the netizens are
the main participants, but in the latter Weibo era, people from different perspectives are
involved. It is a giant step forward from the pre-BBS/forum age in which little negotia-
tion between the government and public occur. ICT advancement greatly enhanced the
possibility of interaction. However, it is necessary to declare that, Weibo era represents

a relatively developed pattern of ICT-mediated public participation, it will continue to
contribute to the process of democracy in China. But the future development of Weibo
as an online public sphere will remain steady and slow as it has already grown into the

most acceptable form in the Chinese social environment.

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