Page 44 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

analyse the roles, functions and interrelations between each of the three elements in the

‘government-media-public’ triangular system.

Figure 1. Operational mechanism in the ‘government-media-public’ triangular system.

2.5.1 The internet as the commercial media market: the empowerment
of the public

As Drori et al. (2003, p.268) indicated, science:

‘provides the cultural scripts for nation-states to act on or support action […] Na-
tion-states are obliged by their role as actors/agents to move toward the achieve-
ment of social goals. In their search for successful paths to achieve these goals,
they rely on the available cultural scripts’.
This suggested that technology brings ideological changes to society, as it reflects

the codified presentation of ‘rational thinking’ and ‘rational order’ (ibid, p.268). The
term ‘techno-nationalism’ has been coined to indicate the influence of technology in
guiding the leadership, which leads to the construction of a new ‘nation-state’ (Zheng,

2008, p.23). The notion begins with its fundamental effect on both national security and
economic prosperity, and therefore ‘a nation’s development policy must have explicit
strategic underpinnings, and that technology must be indigenised at all costs and dif-
fused system wide’ (Feigenbaum, 2003, p.14).
Unlike the liberal and democratic institutions in western countries, the CCP has to

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