Page 76 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Feasibility Study of New Media Technology
on Constructing Online Public Sphere

the internet that enables free minds and ideas to meet, which further triggers sparks of

inspiration (Feng, Liu and Wang, 2008).

3.3.1 BBS and online forums

BBS is a website system running custom software that allows users to connect
to the system through a terminal program. It was the precursor of current popular on-
line forums. BBS offers functions such as bulletin boards, classified discussion areas,
news-reading, uploading and downloading software and data, on-line games and direct

chat with other users. Many BBS are maintained by a webmaster who runs the system
in their spare time. Low-cost, high-performance and interactivity are key features of
BBS. Interactivity, in particular, allows users to exchange messages through email, dis-
cussion areas, public message boards and sometimes via direct chat.

Originating from the BBS, an internet forum is a website system that supports
online discussion. It is a technological evolution of BBS, although many forums still
use the name BBS. It emphasises the communication function by supporting a large
amount of user-generated content. This makes forums different from normal chatrooms

in a way that messages are longer and are at least temporarily archived. Users can post
messages or content on various topics, such as entertainment, current events, education,
travel and leisure. Some forums have a specifically defined theme, while others cover
all kinds of topics. Users share resources with each other in various forms as well.

‘Chinese BBS has two major categories: comprehensive and specialised BBS.
The former type of BBS usually has hundreds or thousands of discussion boards (or
sub-forums) on a wide spectrum of topics such as job-hunting, travel, literature,
news, entertainment, sports, love, etc. The most trafficked BBS, Mop and Tianya,

are both of this type. In contrast, specialised BBS usually have a single theme
such as photography, cars, or electronic device, etc. (Jin, 2008, p.27)’
With the expectation of being ‘the online home for global Chinese’, the Tianya
Community is a popular BBS and forum. Launched on March 1, 1999, it has attracted

more than 130 million registered users with 250 million visitors per month (Tianya,
2018). The founder of Tianya was interested in the stock market at the time and cre-

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