Page 30 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

the problems, but also cultivated debate. Public opinion formed in the public sphere

should be strongly influential so that the authorities will take over the problems and
come up with solutions. It is a ‘network of interaction’ (Habermas, 1996, p.360) for
exchanging views in which ideas will be filtered and integrated to form strong public
opinion on specific issues. The public sphere is not an organisation; rather, it is an open
flexible interaction network. It exists between the state and society as an accommodat-

ing mechanism in which private approaches are adopted to process the social issues
that people have encountered. This adds new topics and materials to the public sphere;
and through the public sphere, political power is adjusted to rational public power.

Wu (2007) argued that the institutional core of the public sphere lies in commu-
nicative networks, which are amplified by the press and mass media with the devel-
opment of information technologies. The communicative networks enable individuals
to ‘participate in the reproduction of culture, and for a public of citizens of the state
to participate in the social integration mediated by public opinion’ (Habermas, 1987,

p.319). A number of scholars shared the same insight: the media helps to expand the
range of participation among the general public (Laclau and Mouffee, 1985; Douglas,
1989; Downing et al., 2001; Curran, 2002); it integrates people’s views and reflects

the general level of public opinion, while shaping and directing the tendency of public
opinion through its overwhelming advantage of wide dissemination and wide reach
(Curran, 1991; Hartley, 1992; Morley, 1992; Dahlgren, 1995); and the transparent na-
ture of the media fosters public discussion in a rational and critical way (Sparks, 1998).
The media played a constructive role in the public sphere in the early phase, and

expanded, reinforced, and shaped it (Negt and Kluge, 1993). It actively promoted pub-
lic participation and democracy in the state. The difference between the private sphere
and political authority forms a kind of discursive democracy, which requires the media

to bridge the gap by encouraging citizens to gather to debate the societal and political
issues and by publicising views collected from the public. It works as the representa-
tive carrier of public opinion and assists effective protest. The media can also introduce
marginalised or isolated groups to the public, presenting an alternative channel for
those groups to express their voices and demands (Curran, 2000). Liu (2013) analysed

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