Page 40 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

tive bias. It is also quite possible that core opinion leaders in cyberspace can point the

direction of online public opinion, and internet-enabled mass public participation in the
virtual space where fierce debates frequently take place rarely results in a widely-ac-
cepted consensus view. Hence, due to the randomness of participation, the fragmen-
tation of online content and the irrationality of many internet users, the online public
sphere has merely existed at a theoretical level in China (Hu, 2014).

A functional defect in the online public sphere was also detected. Corresponding
to Habermas’s concern about the influence of consumerism in the media space, Qiu and
Gao (2010) pointed out that the advancement of the internet undoubtedly brings oppor-

tunities for the construction of a public sphere, but has also enhanced consumerism in
cyberspace, which introduced new challenges as the information may be filtered, ma-
nipulated or isolated by the online media market (Qiu and Gao, 2010).
Hauser (1998, p.83) argued that a utopia of the independent public sphere that en-
gaged citizens in ‘enlightened debate’ would be limited unless there was a customised

institutional arrangement in the cyberspace, while Hu (2014) suggested that a mature
and rational public sphere should be constructed under the non-zero-sum-game model
in which a win-win can be achieved. Authentic democracy and freedom in cyberspace

can be fully achieved only in the context of a legal framework; the construction of the
online public sphere cannot be accomplished at one stroke, and collective efforts from
internet media, netizens and the state are needed (Hu, 2014).

2.4 ‘Information regime’ and the role of the internet

In 1966, Deutsch had emphasised the importance of information for the state’s
governance. Bimber (2003, p.18) proposed the concept of an ‘information regime’ to
describe periods of stable relationships between information, organisations and demo-
cratic structures and characterised the following conditions:

1. A set of dominant properties of political information, such as high cost;
2. A set of opportunities for and constraints on the management of political in-
formation that these properties create; and
3. The appearance of characteristic political organisations and structures adapted

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