Page 42 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

and no longer being an affiliate of the government. Although it gained freedom to some

extent, the government created ‘media evaluation small groups’ (yueping xiaozu) at
various levels in society to monitor media companies, to ensure that information flow
adhered to the government’s rule (Barmé, 1999; Brady, 2008). After the internet was
introduced in China in 1987, a multi-layered strategy was adopted for the surveillance
of online content, in which the controversial ‘Great Firewall of China’ attracted exten-

sive criticism (King, Pan, and Roberts, 2013). However, scholars have found that the
public’s support for CCP rule was actually strengthened due to the commercialisation
and the decentralisation of the media (Brady, 2008; Stockmann and Gallagher, 2011).

Advanced information and communications technology led to Information Re-
gime 3 (2003 – now), in which the media industry stepped into the digital age (Esarey
and Xiao, 2011). Technological connectivity fostered a variety of internet media. The
government developed a series of computerised censor systems to filter and block
online information. Scholars have pointed out that the internet might pose ‘an insur-

mountable threat to the regime and that such a threat may arise from internet use in the
mass public, civil society, the economy and the international community’ (Chase and
Mulvenon, 2002, cited in Zheng, 2008, p.79). Multiple actors were engaged in the in-

formation flow, which further aroused debate on the construction of the public sphere,
as discussed in the first section.
The internet, as a fundamental medium in Information Regime 3, has played a
vital role in the interaction between the public and the government. As Tai (2006, p.97)
indicated, ‘the internet, unlike any of the conventional media, was primarily invented

as a technology to eliminate the possibility of a central control mechanism’. It facili-
tated information dissemination by exposing ordinary Chinese citizens to a brand-new
and broader environment. He also emphasised that the public is less likely to use the

internet in the way designed or desired by the regime (ibid). Zheng (2008) assessed the
phenomenon as pressure for political authority and social support for reform in China.
Hachigian (2001) claimed that the internet would weaken the monopoly of the
CCP’s rule, but Kalathil and Boas (2003, p.136) argued that ‘the authoritarian state is
hardly obsolete in the era of the internet’. Thus, controversy appeared over the influ-

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