Page 77 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 3. Contextual Background

ated Tianya as a forum for people to discuss and learn about stock. When Tianya was

launched, the users were mainly university teachers and personnel from the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences and Xinhua News Agency. It was positioned as a forum
with high-quality user base and content. In 2005, with the rise of the blog, Tianya
launched its own blog service. In 2006, it gained a development funding and, with
support from Google, Tianya Laiba, its social networking service and Tianya Wenda, a

question-and-answer service, were launched. The content in Tianya also concerns peo-
ple’s livelihoods, which helps it occupy a portion of the Chinese public opinion space.
Qiangguo is an affiliated forum of the People’s Daily Online. It was launched on

May 9, 1999. The early form was the ‘Anti-violence in North Atlantic Treaty Organisa-
tion (NATO) protest BBS’, which had significant influence in China and abroad with-
in the first month of launching. On June 19, 1999, the forum name was changed into
Qiangguo. As the first official forum created by the state-owned media website, it is an
essential platform for the Chinese government leaders to interact with the public. On

June 20, 2008, former Chairman Hu Jintao used Qiangguo to communicate with inter-
net users (Liu, 2008). Before this, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, Li Zhaox-
ing and some other leaders also interacted with people through Qiangguo (Yang, 2006).

Baidu Tieba was established in November 2003. It is the largest Chinese online
communication platform and was produced by the Chinese search engine company,
Baidu. The initial idea was to use the internet search idea to create an online commu-
nity that brings people with the same interests together. By searching the key words,
users can have access to the Tieba that they share interests with. Baidu Tieba covers a

wide range of topics for people to express, share and exchange opinions. According to
the statistics provided by Baidu, by 2016, there were more than 1.5 billion registered
users, 8.2 million kinds of Tieba, 3.5 billion topics and 64.6 billion posts (Jin, 2016).

Yang (2012, p.51) has observed that Chinese netizens usually ‘combine elements
of the existing forms with creative adaptations of old forms or new inventions’ while
performing online activities. He pointed out that the postings on BBS and forums are
like the electronic versions of big-character wall posters, which used to be a main form
of public expression in modern Chinese history. This influenced how people make use

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