Page 270 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

opportunities posed by Weibo in comparison with other new platforms. With the devel-

opment of new technologies, the dominance of Weibo in China’s online public sphere
may gradually diminish because of other emergent social media platforms. Thus, new
academic inquiry into the most recent development of ICT tools such as WeChat and
TikTok are needed.
Further research is also needed to expand the scope of the research, and extend it

to a global range. I plan to transfer the theoretical and methodological approaches in
my book to a different cultural environment to examine the validity of my triangular
framework. For example, future research may investigate public participation in differ-

ent centralised regimes. Patterns of citizens’ public discourse in a different regime can
be compared with those of China and different governments’ regulations and coping
mechanisms can be analysed. Findings in the deficiencies and nuances of such com-
parison can be used to re-adjust my theoretical and analytical framework to address a
more comprehensive concept of evolutionary public participation in centralism states.

Such a strand of research could enrich the collection of public participation practices in
Social, Media and Cultural studies, which may promote the generalisation of the ‘gov-
ernment-media-public’ framework.

Overall, I have put a lot of work to shape this book. I hope it can serve as a start-
ing point in promoting more in-depth future studies and in informing a comprehensive
image of ICT products’ role in constructing an online public sphere, as well as in nego-
tiating government-public relations in contemporary China. I look forward to learning
from further studies and to contributing more to Chinese internet studies.

254
254