Page 58 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

its policies on information control and media management. This has led to a substantial

transition in the public’s role – from ‘obeying’ to ‘expression’. This section will review
these changes in the relationship between government and media, and how the Chinese
government uses mass media to deal with its citizens.
In recent years, the interaction between the government and the public has not
always been a zero-sum game, because public participation is the main form of the in-

teraction. Yang (2009) proposed the concept of ‘online activism’ to describe one typical
pattern of public participation in cyberspace, referring to an individual’s or an organisa-
tion’s active engagement in ‘contentious activities associated with the use of the inter-

net and other new communication technologies’ (ibid, p.14). However, online activism
is not the same as public movements.

2.5.3.1 Public events: social movements and online activism

In China, the internet has performed two principal functions: as a new form of

media and as a new form of association (Zheng, 2008). It has not only acted as a public
channel for communication of citizens’ views, especially social grievances, but has also
fostered the constitution of new social organisations or groups (ibid). Zheng (2008)
found that the internet was a new area in which the state and society could both benefit

in pursuing their interests, but that there were also areas in which the two actors’ inter-
ests would conflict. He emphasised the function of the internet as a new form of associ-
ation as:
‘in the highly developed information age, the forms of public participation, which

are choosing and practicing by social groups, may have different consequences in
China’s real world’ (Zheng, 2008, p.47)’
Social events formed on the internet can be contentious and potentially sedi-
tious, challenging ‘normalised practices, modes of causation or systems of authority’

(Beissinger, 2002, p.14). Arendt (1970, p.7) defined ‘events’ as an interruption of ‘rou-
tine processes and routine procedures’. Social events formed on the internet can be pur-
poseful, aiming to ‘transform rather than to reproduce, to overturn or alter that which,
in the absence of the event, others would take for granted’ (Beissinger, 2002, p.14-15).

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